Theoretical calculations are performed to investigate the angular momentum and Coulomb effects on fragmentation and multifragmentation in peripheral heavy-ion collisions at Fermi energies. Inhomogeneous distributions of hot fragments in the freeze-ou
t volume are taken into account by microcanonical Markov chain calculations within the Statistical Multifragmentation Model (SMM). Including an angular momentum and a long-range Coulomb interaction between projectile and target residues leads to new features in the statistical fragmentation picture. In this case, one can obtain specific correlations of sizes of emitted fragments with their velocities and an emission in the reaction plane. In addition, one may see a significant influence of these effects on the isotope production both in the midrapidity and in the kinematic regions of the projectile/target. The relation of this approach to the simulations of such collisions with dynamical models is also discussed.
We analyze the production cross sections and isotopic distributions of projectile-like residues in the reactions $^{112}$Sn + $^{112}$Sn and $^{124}$Sn + $^{124}$Sn at an incident beam energy of 1 GeV/nucleon measured with the FRS fragment separator
at the GSI laboratory. Calculations within the statistical multifragmentation model (SMM) for an ensemble of excited sources were performed with ensemble parameters determined previously for similar reactions at 600 MeV/nucleon. The obtained good agreement with the experiment establishes the universal properties of the excited spectator systems produced during the dynamical stage of the reaction. It is furthermore confirmed that a significant reduction of the symmetry-energy term at the freeze-out stage of reduced density and high temperature is necessary to reproduce the experimental isotope distributions. A trend of decreasing symmetry energy for large neutron-rich fragments of low excitation energy is interpreted as a nuclear-structure effect.
