On the relationship between coherent excitation and quasi-elastic knock-out during the dissociation of 16O nuclei on protons

In diffractive [Formula: see text]O interactions with the subsequent decay of an excited [Formula: see text]O nucleus into proton fragment ([Formula: see text]) and nitrogen nucleus ([Formula: see text]N), the kinematical characteristics of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]N are obtained by the parameter-free Monte Carlo simulation method. The angular, momentum, rapidity and correlation Monte Carlo characteristics for [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]N are consistent with the distributions of the similar quantities obtained experimentally in [Formula: see text]O collisions at a momentum of [Formula: see text] per nucleon of an incident [Formula: see text]O ∗ nucleus in the rest frame of the target proton (p). The relative probabilities have been found for coherent diffraction ([Formula: see text]) of a proton (p) on the [Formula: see text]O nucleus as a whole, when an excited oxygen, [Formula: see text]O ∗ , nucleus is formed, decaying into [Formula: see text]N and [Formula: see text] (which is not necessarily the nucleon on which, in fact, the diffraction interaction has occurred), and for incoherent interaction process ([Formula: see text]) of a proton (p) on one of the nucleons of the [Formula: see text]O nucleus, when this nucleon is observed as a proton ([Formula: see text]) fragment.