The technique of nuclear track emulsions is used to explore the fragmentation of light relativistic nuclei down to the most peripheral interactions - nuclear "white" stars. A complete pattern of therelativistic dissociation of a $^8$B nucleus with target fragment accompaniment is presented. Relativistic dissociation $^{ 9}$Be$\to2\alpha$ is explored using significant statistics and a relative contribution of $^{ 8}$Be decays from 0$^+$ and 2$^+$ states is established. Target fragment accompaniments are shown for relativistic fragmentation $^{ 14}$N$\to$3He+H and $^{ 22}$Ne$\to$5He. The leading role of the electromagnetic dissociation on heavy nuclei with respect to break-ups on target protons is demonstrated in all these cases. It is possible to conclude that the peripheral dissociation of relativistic nuclei in nuclear track emulsion is a unique tool to study many-body systems composed of lightest nuclei and nucleons in the energy scale relevant for nuclear astrophysics.
Categories: nucl-ex