Studying the breakup of relativistic O-16 nuclei into multiply charged fragments

The breakup of a projectile oxygen nucleus on a proton into multiply charge d fragments has been investigated at an incident energy of 3.25 GeV/c per p rojectile nucleon, and new experimental data from this investigation are pr esented. In collisions where the fragments retain the charge of the inciden t nucleus, only channels involving fragments with even charges are observed . Among these, there are always helium nuclei, whose total yield is dominat ed by the He-4 isotope, which contributes about 85%. For collisions where t he fragments also retain the total number of constituent nucleons, final st ates are formed either by four alpha particles or by an alpha particle and a C-12 nucleus.