Emission time of the intermediate mass fragments in collisions of relativistic deuterons with the gold target

The relative velocity correlation function of pairs of intermediate mass fragments has been studied for d + Au collisions at 4.4 GeV. Experimental correlation functions are compared to that obtained by multi-body Coulomb trajectory calculations under the assumption of various decay times of the fragmenting system. The combined approach with the empirically modified intranuclear cascade code followed by the statistical multifragmentation model was used to generate the starting conditions for these calculations. The fragment emission time is found to be less than 40 fm c −1.