Nuclear stopping power and recoiling nucleons

We examine the use of the momentum distribution of recoiling nucleons to study the stopping power law of nuclear matter for incident nucleons with high energies. The dependence of the momentum distribution on the stopping power index is studied in detail for both leading nucleons and recoiling nucleons in p + d reactions. There are two regions where the momentum distribution of the recoiling nucleons is sensitive to the stopping power law. This sensitivity can be used to study the stopping power law experimentally. (orig.)