A method to identify nuclear reactions registered in ionographic detectors

A method is established to examine all compatible assignations of charge and mass number to the target and emergent prongs of an event registered in an ionographic detector (such as nuclear emulsion or silver chloride crystals) under the requirements of conservation of momentum and total energy. The kinematical parameters corresponding to the most likely configurations are determined by a least-squares process. For the accepted hypothesis, the probability associated to the minimized value of the chi-square function and to the number of degrees of freedom is computed. The correctness of the method is tested by means of simulated events. (Auth.)