Electromagnetic Dissociation on Cobalt and Gold Targets by a 10.2 Gev/nucleon Gold Beam

Collisions of relativistic heavy ions (RHI) can be broadly categorized as two types: central (nuclear force dominated) and peripheral (coulomb force dominated). The experiment described addresses the latter. Unlike the neutron removal cross section via the nuclear force sigma_{nucl}, the neutron removal cross section via the coulomb force sigma _{coul} is an increasing function of energy due to the Lorentz contraction of the electromagnetic fields. As more energetic and heavier (higher Z) RHI beams have become available, there appears to be an overestimation of the one neutron removal cross section by the virtual photon theoretical treatment of Wiezsacker, Williams and Fermi (WWF). An experiment was performed at the AGS at BNL using a 10.2 GeV/nucleon Au beam in order to determine the behavior of the phenomena referred to as Electromagnetic Dissociation (ED). Au and Co targets were irradiated after which, the yield of one and two neutron removal from Au and Co along with other isotopes was determined using gamma ray spectroscopy. In addition, a testing program to evaluate the performance of a group of custom made circuit boards for use in the Late Energy Trigger (LET) in a strange matter search experiment (E864) will be described.