Studies of light nucleus clustering in relativistic nuclei collisions

Interactions of relativistic nuclei that lead to minimal mutual excitations of colliding nuclei and which do not involve charged-meson production are the most advantageous in studying the cluster structure of nuclei. We give an overview of the results and prospects of nuclear clustering studies on the grounds of the observations of interactions of light nuclei with an initial energy above 1 A GeV in nuclear emulsions. Thank to the best spatial resolution and the full solid angle acceptance provided by nuclear emulsions, such an approach allowed to observe poorly known nuclear structures and to identify features of their clustering. Such structures might play a role of intermediate quantum states in a fusion of more than two nuclei in stellar processes. (authors)