Light-ion emission in heavy-ion collisions: Beam energy dependence

Light ions with Z = 1, 2 and velocities greater than the beam velocity, produced in collisions between carbon and nickel nuclei, are studied using 12C beams with energies between 7.5 and 16 MeV per nucleon. Energy spectra and angular distributions are reported and excitation functions derived from these data are presented. Integral cross sections for protons with velocities greater than the beam velocity are found to be insensitive to the beam energy. A model in which particles are emitted by an excited source, moving with a velocity approximately one-half that of the beam, is found to be capable of reproducing most of the data