The transverse momentum technique is used to analyse charged-particle exclusive data in central C-Ne and C-Cu interactions at energy of 3.7 GeV per nucleon. Clear evidence of in-plane and out-of-plane (squeeze-out) flow effects for protons and pi^{ -} mesons have been obtained. In C-Ne interactions in-plane flow of pi^{ -} mesons is in the same direction as for the protons, while in C-Cu collisions pions show antuflow behaviour. From the transverse momentum and azimuthal distributions of protons and pi^{ -} mesons with respect to the reaction plane, the flow (the measure of the amount of collective transverse momentum transfer in the reaction plane) and the parameter a_{ 2} (the measure of the anisotropic emission strength) have been extracted. The flow effects increase with the mass of the particle and the mass number of target A_{ T}. The comparison of our in-plane flow results with flow data for various projectile/target configurations was made using the scaled flow F_{ S}=F/(A_{ P} ^{ 1/3}+A_{ T}^{ 1/3}). F_{ S} demonstrates a common scaling behaviour for flow values from different systems. The Quark Gluon String Model (QGSM) was used for the comparison with the experimental data. The QGSM yields a signature of in-plane and out-of-plane flow effects in C-ne and C-Cu collisions for protons.
Categories: nucl-ex