Fragmentation of relativistic nuclei in peripheral interactions in nuclear track emulsion

The technique of nuclear track emulsions is used to explore the fragmentation of light relativistic nuclei down to the most peripheral interactions: nuclear 'white' stars. A complete pattern of the relativistic dissociation of a 8B nucleus with target fragment accompaniment is presented. Relativistic dissociation 9Be → 2α is explored using significant statistics, and a relative contribution of 8Be decays from 0+ and 2+ states is established. Target fragment accompaniments are shown for relativistic fragmentation 14N → 3He +H and 22Ne → 5He. The leading role of the electromagnetic dissociation on heavy nuclei with respect to breakups on target protons is demonstrated in all these cases. It is possible to conclude that the peripheral dissociation of relativistic nuclei in nuclear track emulsion is a unique tool to study many-body systems composed of the lightest nuclei and nucleons in the energy scale relevant for nuclear astrophysics.