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 expe
rimental 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.
