Interaction of stopped antiprotons with copper

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Abstract
A natural Cu target was irradiated with the antiproton beam from the Low Energy Antiproton Ring facility at CERN. The 105 MeV/c p¯ beam was completely slowed down inside a thick target producing many radioactive products. Starting shortly after the irradiation and continuing for about one year, this residual activity was counted using off-line gamma-ray spectroscopy techniques. The yields of 40 radioactive reaction products were determined. The charge dispersion and complete mass yield distribution were deduced using a well-established fitting procedure. The shape of the mass yield and, in particular, the average number of removed nucleons, the dispersion of the mass distribution, and its logarithmic slope characterize the average energy deposited during the antiproton-nucleus interaction. We compare these quantities with similar data gathered for other projectiles interacting with natural Cu targets. These comparisons indicate that the average excitation energy of the system formed after the stopped antiproton annihilation is similar to the average excitation energy following 2-GeV proton interaction with Cu nuclei. The observed mass distribution is also compared with the intranuclear cascade calculations.