Source properties of intermediate mass fragments emitted in the 270 MeV3He + 232Th reaction

Abstract Triple coincidences between intermediate mass fragments (IMFs) and angle-correlated fission fragments were measured in the 270 MeV 3 He + 232 Th reaction. These measurements demonstrate that on the average IMF emission occurs prior to fission from a source which carriers 75–80% of the beam momentum. It was deduced that the average number of IMFs per fragmentation event is close to unity. The dependence of the fission probability on the IMF emission angle and atomic number suggests that fragments emitted at forward angles come from more peripheral collisions than those emitted at very backward angles.