Doubly differential cross sections for galactic heavy-ion fragmentation

An abrasion-ablation T-matrix formulation is applied to the calculation of double differential-cross sections in projectile fragmentation of 2.1 GeV/nucleon O-16 on Be-9 and 86 MeV/nucleon C-12 on C-12 and Ag-108. An exponential parameterization of the ablation T-matrix is used and the total width of the intermediate states is taken as a parameter. Fitted values of the total width to experimental results are used to predict the lifetime of the ablation stage and indicate a decay time on the order of 10 to the -19th power sec.