A new phenomenon in heavy ion inelastic scattering: the towing mode

The inelastic scattering of Ar-40 on Ni-58 has been studied at 44 MeV per nucleon incident energy in coincidence with light particle emission. Besides the well known mechanisms of inelastic excitation, pick up break up and nucleon knock out, a new phenomenon has been observed, giving rise to fast forward moving particles with specific angular correlations. This newly observed mechanism seems to be a generic phenomenon present for various projectile-target combinations and incident energies. Its contribution to the inelastic spectrum has been extracted and a tentative interpretation is given. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.