No Arabic abstract
Isotope temperatures from double ratios of hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, and carbon isotopic yields, and excited-state temperatures from yield ratios of particle-unstable resonances in 4He, 5Li, and 8Be, were determined for spectator fragmentation, following collisions of 197Au with targets ranging from C to Au at incident energies of 600 and 1000 MeV per nucleon. A deviation of the isotopic from the excited-state temperatures is observed which coincides with the transition from residue formation to multi-fragment production, suggesting a chemical freeze-out prior to thermal freeze-out in bulk disintegrations.
Isoscaling and its relation to the symmetry energy in the fragmentation of excited residues produced at relativistic energies were studied in two experiments conducted at the GSI laboratory. The INDRA multidetector has been used to detect and identify light particles and fragments with Z <= 5 in collisions of 12C on 112,124Sn at incident energies of 300 and 600 MeV per nucleon. Isoscaling is observed, and the deduced parameters decrease with increasing centrality. Symmetry term coefficients, deduced within the statistical description of isotopic scaling, are near gamma = 25 MeV for peripheral and gamma < 15 MeV for central collisions. In a very recent experiment with the ALADIN spectrometer, the possibility of using secondary beams for reaction studies at relativistic energies has been explored. Beams of 107Sn, 124Sn, 124La, and 197Au were used to investigate the mass and isospin dependence of projectile fragmentation at 600 MeV per nucleon. The decrease of the isoscaling parameters is confirmed and extended over the full fragmentation regime covered in these reactions.
Isotopic effects in the fragmentation of excited target residues following collisions of $^{12}$C on $^{112,124}$Sn at incident energies of 300 and 600 MeV per nucleon were studied with the INDRA 4$pi$ detector. The measured yield ratios for light particles and fragments with atomic number $Z leq$ 5 obey the exponential law of isotopic scaling. The deduced scaling parameters decrease strongly with increasing centrality to values smaller than 50% of those obtained for the peripheral event groups. Symmetry term coefficients, deduced from these data within the statistical description of isotopic scaling, are near $gamma =$ 25 MeV for peripheral and $gamma <$ 15 MeV for central collisions.
We argue that hadron multiplicities in central high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions are established very close to the phase boundary between hadronic and quark matter. In the hadronic picture this can be described by multi-particle collisions whose importance is strongly enhanced due to the high particle density in the phase transition region. As a consequence of the rapid fall-off of the multi-particle scattering rates the experimentally determined chemical freeze-out temperature is a good measure of the phase transition temperature.
Multi-fragment decays of 129Xe, 197Au, and 238U projectiles in collisions with Be, C, Al, Cu, In, Au, and U targets at energies between E/A = 400 MeV and 1000 MeV have been studied with the ALADIN forward-spectrometer at SIS. By adding an array of 84 Si-CsI(Tl) telescopes the solid-angle coverage of the setup was extended to theta_lab = 16 degree. This permitted the complete detection of fragments from the projectile-spectator source. The dominant feature of the systematic set of data is the Z_bound universality that is obeyed by the fragment multiplicities and correlations. These observables are invariant with respect to the entrance channel if plotted as a function of Z_bound, where Z_bound is the sum of the atomic numbers Z_i of all projectile fragments with Z_i geq 2. No significant dependence on the bombarding energy nor on the target mass is observed. The dependence of the fragment multiplicity on the projectile mass follows a linear scaling law. The reasons for and the limits of the observed universality of spectator fragmentation are explored within the realm of the available data and with model studies. It is found that the universal properties should persist up to much higher bombarding energies than explored in this work and that they are consistent with universal features exhibited by the intranuclear cascade and statistical multifragmentation models. PACS numbers: 25.70.Mn, 25.70.Pq, 25.75.-q
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.