EMPIRICAL FORMALISM FOR PROJECTILE FRAGMENTATION AND PRODUCTION OF NEW NEUTRON-RICH NUCLEI WITH RIBS

The projectile fragment separator type radioactive ion beam (RIB) faci lities, being developed in different laboratories, provide the scope f or producing many new exotic nuclei through fragmentation of high ener gy radioactive ion (RI) beams. A new empirical parametrization for the estimation of cross-sections of projectile fragments has been prescri bed for studying the advantages and limitations of high energy RI beam s for the production of new exotic nuclei. The parametrization reprodu ces the experimental data for the production of fragments from neutron -rich projectiles accurately in contrast to the existing parametrizati on which tends to overestimate the cross-section of neutron-rich fragm ents in most cases. The modified formalism has been used to compute th e cross-sections of neutron-rich species produced by fragmentation of radioactive projectiles (RIBs). It has been found that, given any limi t of production cross-section, the exoticity of the fragment increases rather slowly and shows a saturation tendency as the projectile is ma de more and more exotic. This essentially limits, to an extent, the ut ility of very neutron-rich radioactive beams vis-a-vis production of n ew neutron-rich exotic species.