Quantification of the evaporation process during fragmentation of space-relevant nuclei on elemental targets

This study examines charge-changing cross sections for 12C, 14N, 16O, and 20Ne projectiles on elemental targets (C, Al, Cu) at a beam energy of around 290 MeV/nucleon. The two-stage abrasion-ablation model is used, with the abrasion stage described via the Glauber model, incorporating validated single-nucleon density distributions from proton elastic scattering data. In the ablation stage, where particle evaporation occurs, the contribution to charge-changing cross sections is estimated using two approaches. First, a statistical decay model is employed to analyze the evaporation of protons following neutron removal in the abrasion stage. The second approach estimates evaporation contributions by subtracting the direct process component (abrasion) from the experimental charge-changing cross section data. A comparison between these estimated contributions from the experimental data and the predictions of the statistical model enables a systematic evaluation of the evaporation process. The key factors influencing evaporation, such as excitation energy distribution parameters, decay width of the emitted particles, and nucleon separation energies, are analyzed. A strong correlation is observed between the maximum excitation energy available for evaporation and the neutron separation energy of the projectiles across different targets, highlighting the role of evaporation dynamics in the charge-changing cross sections.