Pilot Study on the Measurement of the Production of Boron Isotopes in C+p Reactions at 13.5A GeV/c with NA61/SHINE

The current understanding of cosmic-ray propagation in the Galaxy is significantly hindered by the inadequate knowledge of nuclear fragmentation cross-sections, while the other key component, the secondary cosmic-ray fluxes are measured with high precision by space-based detectors. This situation can be redressed by utilizing NA61/SHINE, a fixed-target experimental facility at CERN. Pilot data on fragmentation was taken in 2018 with the main goal of probing the feasibility of performing fragmentation studies at SPS energies. Two fixed targets, polyethylene (C$_2$H$_4$) and graphite wereemployed to study C+p interactions at 13.5 $\textit{A}$GeV/$\textit{c}$ beam momentum. In this contribution, we will present the isotopic production ofboron including direct production of $^{10}$B and $^{11}$B. We conclude with an outlook for dedicated high statistics data-taking to study the fragmentation of various primary nuclei from C to Si, for which SPS beam time may become available as early as autumn of 2023.