The agreement between the fragments internal and kinetic temperatures with the breakup temperature is investigated using a Statistical Multifragmentation Model which makes no a priori as- sumption on the relationship between them. We thus examine the
conditions for obtaining such agreement and find that, in the framework of our model, this holds only in a relatively narrow range of excitation energy. The role played by the qualitative shape of the fragments state densities is also examined. Our results suggest that the internal temperature of the light fragments may be affected by this quantity, whose behavior may lead to constant internal temperatures over a wide excitation energy range. It thus suggests that the nuclear thermometry may provide valuable information on the nuclear state density.
The fragmentation of thermalized sources is studied using a version of the Statistical Multifragmentation Model which employs state densities that take the pairing gap in the nuclear levels into account. Attention is focused on the properties of the
charge distributions observed in the breakup of the source. Since the microcanonical version of the model used in this study provides the primary fragment excitation energy distribution, one may correlate the reduction of the odd-even staggering in the charge distribution with the increasing occupation of high energy states. Thus, in the frame- work of this model, such staggering tends to disappear as a function of the total excitation energy of the source, although the energy per particle may be small for large systems. We also find that, although the deexcitation of the primary fragments should, in principle, blur these odd-even effects as the fragments follow their decay chains, the consistent treatment of pairing may significantly enhance these staggering effects on the final yields. In the framework of this model, we find that odd-even effects in the charge distributions should be observed in the fragmentation of relatively light systems at very low excitation energies. Our results also suggest that the odd-even staggering may provide useful information on the nuclear state density.
The Generalized Fermi Breakup recently demonstrated to be formally equivalent to the Statistical Multifragmentation Model, if the contribution of excited states are included in the state densities of the former, is implemented. Since this treatment r
equires the application of the Statistical Multifragmentation Model repeatedly on the hot fragments until they have decayed to their ground states, it becomes extremely computational demanding, making its application to the systems of interest extremely difficult. Based on exact recursion formulae previously developed by Chase and Mekjian to calculate the statistical weights very efficiently, we present an implementation which is efficient enough to allow it to be applied to large systems at high excitation energies. Comparison with the GEMINI++ sequential decay code shows that the predictions obtained with our treatment are fairly similar to those obtained with this more traditional model.
The density dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy is inspected using the Statistical Multifragmentation Model with Skyrme effective interactions. The model consistently considers the expansion of the fragments volumes at finite temperature at the
freeze-out stage. By selecting parameterizations of the Skyrme force that lead to very different equations of state for the symmetry energy, we investigate the sensitivity of different observables to the properties of the effective forces. Our results suggest that, in spite of being sensitive to the thermal dilation of the fragments volumes, it is difficult to distinguish among the Skyrme forces from the isoscaling analysis. On the other hand, the isotopic distribution of the emitted fragments turns out to be very sensitive to the force employed in the calculation.
The properties of the nuclear isoscaling at finite temperature are investigated and the extent to which its parameter $alpha$ holds information on the symmetry energy is examined. We show that, although finite temperature effects invalidate the analy
tical formulas that relate the isoscaling parameter $alpha$ to those of the mass formula, the symmetry energy remains the main ingredient that dictates the behavior of $alpha$ at finite temperatures, even for very different sources. This conclusion is not obvious as it is not true in the vanishing temperature limit, where analytical formulas are available. Our results also reveal that different statistical ensembles lead to essentially the same conclusions based on the isoscaling analysis, for the temperatures usually assumed in theoretical calculations in the nuclear multifragmentation process.
The Statistical Multifragmentation Model is modified to incorporate the Helmholtz free energies calculated in the finite temperature Thomas-Fermi approximation using Skyrme effective interactions. In this formulation, the density of the fragments at
the freeze-out configuration corresponds to the equilibrium value obtained in the Thomas-Fermi approximation at the given temperature. The behavior of the nuclear caloric curve at constant volume is investigated in the micro-canonical ensemble and a plateau is observed for excitation energies between 8 and 10 MeV per nucleon. A kink in the caloric curve is found at the onset of this gas transition, indicating the existence of a small excitation energy region with negative heat capacity. In contrast to previous statistical calculations, this situation takes place even in this case in which the system is constrained to fixed volume. The observed phase transition takes place at approximately constant entropy. The charge distribution and other observables also turn out to be sensitive to the treatment employed in the calculation of the free energies and the fragments volumes at finite temperature, specially at high excitation energies. The isotopic distribution is also affected by this treatment, which suggests that this prescription may help to obtain information on the nuclear equation of state.
