Large Longitudinal Spin Alignment of Excited Projectiles in Intermediate Energy Inelastic Scattering

We study the sequential breakup of E/A=24.0 MeV Li7 projectiles excited through inelastic interactions with C, Be, and Al target nuclei. For peripheral events that do not excite the target, we find very large spin alignment of the excited Li7 projectiles longitudinal to the beam axis. This spin alignment is independent of the target used, and we propose a simple alignment mechanism that arises from an angular-momentum-excitation-energy mismatch. This mechanism is independent of the potential used for scattering and should be present in many scattering experiments.