BECQUEREL (BErilium/Boron Clustering QUEst in RELativistic Multifragmentation) – experiments continuing the collaboration of the Institute for Space Sciences to the previous heavy ion experiments in nuclear emulsions at JINR, Dubna, Russia.
The project is aimed to continue the irradiation of nuclear emulsions with newly generated ion beams with the purpose of:
- studying in detail the fragmentation processes of light radioactive nuclei.
- obtaining basic information about the charge states of secondary particles resulting in the irradiation with moderate and heavy nuclei.
The expected results would make it possible to:
- answer some topical questions regarding the cluster structure of light radioactive nuclei.
- clarify the role of collective effects in dense plasmas of colliding nuclei.
The results obtained so far serve as a means of evaluation and illustration of the capabilities of the Nuclotron facility for research in nuclear physics and astrophysics. Furthermore, the investigations with light nuclei provides a basis for the study of increasingly complicated systems like He → H + n produced in the multifragmentation of heavier relativistic nuclei at an energy scale that is relevant to nuclear astrophysics.