No Arabic abstract
Multifragmentation scenarios, as predicted by antisymmetrized molecular dynamics (AMD) or momentum-dependent stochastic mean-field (BGBD) calculations are compared. While in the BGBD case fragment emission is clearly linked to the spinodal decomposition mechanism, i.e. to mean-field instabilities, in AMD many-body correlations have a stronger impact on the fragmentation dynamics and clusters start to appear at earlier times. As a consequence, fragments are formed on shorter time scales in AMD, on about equal footing of light particle pre-equilibrium emission. Conversely, in BGBD pre-equilibrium and fragment emissions happen on different time scales and are related to different mechanisms.
The statistical multifragmentation model (SMM) has been widely used to explain experimental data of intermediate energy heavy ion collisions. A later entrant in the field is the canonical thermodynamic model (CTM) which is also being used to fit experimental data. The basic physics of both the models is the same, namely that fragments are produced according to their statistical weights in the available phase space. However, they are based on different statistical ensembles, and the methods of calculation are different: while the SMM uses Monte-Carlo simulations, the CTM solves recursion relations. In this paper we compare the predictions of the two models for a few representative cases.
The fragmentation of the quasi-projectile is studied with the INDRA multidetector for different colliding systems and incident energies in the Fermi energy range. Different experimental observations show that a large part of the fragmentation is not compatible with the statistical fragmentation of a fully equilibrated nucleus. The study of internal correlations is a powerful tool, especially to evidence entrance channel effects. These effects have to be included in the theoretical descriptions of nuclear multifragmentation.
Stochastic mean-field simulations for multifragmenting sources at the same excitation energy per nucleon have been performed. The freeze-out volume, a concept which needs to be precisely defined in this dynamical approach, was shown to increase as a function of three parameters: freeze-out instant, fragment multiplicity and system size.
Different statistical multifragmentation models have been used to study isoscaling, i.e. the factorization of the isotope ratios from two reactions, into fugacity terms of proton and neutron number, R21(N,Z)=Y2(N,Z)/Y1(N,Z)=C*exp(a*N+b*Z). Even though the primary isotope distributions are quite different from the final distributions due to evaporation from the excited fragments, the values of a and b are not much affected by sequential decays. a is shown to be mainly sensitive to the proton and neutron composition of the emitting source and may be used to study isospin-dependent properties in nuclear collisions such as the symmetry energy in the equation of state of asymmetric nuclear matter.
At low photon energies, the potential models of nucleus-nucleus bremsstrahlung are based on electric transition multipole operators, which are derived either only from the nuclear current or only from the charge density by making the long-wavelength approximation and using the Siegert theorem. In the latter case, the bremsstrahlung matrix elements are divergent and some regularization techniques are used to obtain finite values for the bremsstrahlung cross sections. From an extension of the Siegert theorem, which is not based on the long-wavelength approximation, a new potential model of nucleus-nucleus bremsstrahlung is developed. Only convergent integrals are included in this approach. Formal links between bremsstrahlung cross sections obtained in these different models are made. Furthermore, three different ways to calculate the regularized matrix elements are discussed and criticized. Some prescriptions for a proper implementation of the regularization are deduced. A numerical comparison between the different models is done by applying them to the $alpha+alpha$ bremsstrahlung.