A self-consistent method for calculating the evaporation of heavy fragments following energetic initial reactions

A self-consistent means of treating the evaporation component in fragment emission following energetic interactions involving complex nuclei is presented. Application of this method to a case involving intermediate energy proton reactions is used to demonstrate its potential. By adjusting one global level density parameter and one excitation energy parameter for each incident beam energy, nearly self-consistent fits are obtained to the evaporation component for seven measured fragments from p + Ag interactions at incident beam energies of 210, 300, and 480 MeV. Calculations for the inverse cross sections involved are based on an optical model and do not require the use of fractional Coulomb barriers. The excitation energy distributions derived for the emitting nuclei from the fits to the p + Ag data are substantially different than those predicted by intra-nuclear cascade calculations. (orig.)