A Monte Carlo approach to study neutron and fragment emission in heavy-ion reactions

Quantum Molecular Dynamics models (QMD) are Monte Carlo approaches targeted at the description of nucleon–ion and ion–ion collisions. We have developed a QMD code, which has been used for the simulation of the fast stage of ion–ion collisions, considering a wide range of system masses and system mass asymmetries. The slow stage of the collisions has been described by statistical methods. The combination of both stages leads to final distributions of particles and fragments, which have been compared to experimental data available in the literature. A few results of these comparisons, concerning neutron double-differential production cross-sections for C, Ne and Ar ions impinging on C, Cu and Pb targets at 290–400 MeV/A bombarding energies and fragment isotopic distributions from Xe + Al at 790 MeV/A, are shown in this paper.