OBSERVATION OF GAMMA-RAY NUCLEAR TRANSITIONS OF EXCITED NUCLEI PRODUCED IN HADRON–NUCLEAR INTERACTIONS IN THE HYPERON+ EXPERIMENT

Abstract

Possible products of hadron–nuclear interactions in a hadron beam at energies of of 5–10 GeV are secondary excited nuclei. During transitions from the excited state to the ground or another excited state, such nuclei emit photons with megaelectronvolt energies corresponding to the difference in the levels of the excitation transition of the nuclei. The energy spectra of deexcitation photons are the characteristic features of the excited nuclei. Therefore, the detection of these photons of gamma-ray nuclear transitions makes it possible to identify the nuclei formed in the final state of such a reaction. In turn, the correlation of the excitation spectra of secondary nuclei with the type and parameters of hadron systems emitted in the forward hemisphere of the reaction provides information on the dynamics of hadron–nuclear interactions. The first results of measuring the spectra of gamma-ray nuclear transitions in the Hyperon+ experiment in a test run using a set of statistics on hadron–nuclear interactions with a momentum of 7 GeV/c on a ¹²C carbon target by means of the gamma nuclear transition (GNT) spectrometer have been reported in this work. The obtained data can be interpreted as an observation of a series of gamma transitions of ¹¹C nuclei produced in the final state of events selected with the trigger for the interaction of the beam particles with the target