He production in 158 A GeV/c Pb on Pb interactions

Abstract Angular distributions of projectile-associated He fragments from Pb induced reactions on stationary Pb target at 158 A GeV/c incident momentum are reported. The precision of the angular measurements was about ±0.01 mrad. Two emission components are appearing in the projected angular spectra of the He particles, one representing fragmentation at Fermi momentum scale, while the other one exhibits large transverse momentum transfer. By scaling with the incident momentum the angular spectra of He particles are compared with earlier reported measurements of Au on Au interactions at 11.6 A GeV/c. The p T spectrum of the He particles appears the same for the two cases.