Mutual heavy ion dissociation in peripheral collisions at ultrarelativistic energies - art. no. 024903

We study mutual dissociation of heavy nuclei in peripheral collisions at ul trarelativistic energies. Earlier this process was proposed for beam lumino sity monitoring via simultaneous registration of forward and backward neutr ons in zero degree calorimeters at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHl C) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Electromagnetic dissociation of heavy ions is considered in the framework of the Weizscker-Williams method and s imulated by the RELDIS code, Photoneutron cross sections measured in differ ent experiments and calculated by the GNASH code are used as input for the calculations of dissociation cross sections. The difference in results obta ined with different inputs provides a realistic estimation for the systemat ic uncertainty of the luminosity monitoring method. Contributions to simult aneous neutron emission due to grazing nuclear interactions is calculated w ithin the abrasion model. A good description of the CERN SPS experimental d ata on An and Pb dissociation gives confidence in the predictive power of t he model for AuAu and PbPb collisions at the RHIC and the Large Hadron Coll ider at CERN.