Intranuclear Cascade - Percolation Approach for Protons and Light Fragments Production in Neon-Niobium Reactions at 400 and 800 MeV per Nucleon

The results of intranuclear cascade calculations (ideal gas with two-body collisions and no mean field), complemented by a simple percolation procedure, are compared with experimental data on protons and light nuclear fragments ([ital d], [ital t], [sup 3]He, and [sup 4]He) measured in 400 and 800 MeV/nucleon Ne+Nb collisions using a large solid angle detector. The model reproduces quite well global experimental observables like nuclear fragment multiplicity distributions or production cross sections, and nuclear fragment to proton ratios. For rapidity distributions the best agreement occurs for peripheral reactions. Transverse momentum analysis confirms once again that the cascade, although being a microscopic approach, gives too small a collective flow, the best agreement being reached for [ital Z]=2 nuclear fragments. Nevertheless these comparisons are encouraging for further improvements of the model. Moreover, such an approach is easy to extend to any other models that could calculate the nucleon phase space distribution after the compression stage of the reaction, when light nuclear fragments emitted at large angles are constructed from percolation.