Fragmentation of ⁷Li relativistic nuclei on a proton into the ³H + ⁴He channel

In a track nuclear photoemulsion exposed to a beam of Li-7 nuclei accelerated to a momentum of 3 GeV/c per nucleon at the synchrophasotron of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, Dubna), 13 events in which Li-7 nuclei interacting with protons break up into H-3 and He-4 fragments were detected among 3730 inelastic-interaction events. For this fragmentation channel, the cross section was found to be 8 +/- 2 mb. The average value of the fragment total transverse momentum was 214 +/- 5 MeV/c. This value exceeds markedly the average value of the transverse-momentum transfer in the coherent dissociation of Li-7 nuclei on track-emulsion nuclei (166 +/- 5MeV/c). The recoil-proton transverse momentum was on average 98% of the total proton momentum. The longitudinal-momentum distribution of protons was characterized by a variance of 16 MeV/c and a mean value of 37 +/- 2MeV/c.