Reconstruction of nuclear charged fragment trajectories from a large-gap sweeper magnet

A new method to reconstruct charged fragment four-momentum vectors from measured trajectories behind an open, large gap, magnetic dispersion element (a sweeper magnet) has been developed. In addition to the position and angle behind the magnet it includes the position measurement in the dispersive direction at the target. The method improves the energy and angle resolution of the reconstruction significantly for experiments with fast rare isotopes; where the beam size at the target position is large. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.