0000000000406738
AUTHOR
D. R. Bowman
Onset of nuclear vaporization inAu197+197Au collisions
Multifragmentation has been measured for [sup 197]Au+[sup 197]Au collisions at [ital E]/[ital A]=100, 250, and 400 MeV. The mean fragment multiplicity increases monotonically with the charged particle multiplicity at [ital E]/[ital A]=100 MeV, but decreases for central collisions with incident energy, consistent with the onset of nuclear vaporization. Molecular dynamics calculations follow some trends but underpredict the observed fragment multiplicities. Including the statistical decay of excited residues improves the agreement for peripheral collisions but worsens it for central collisions.
Fragment Flow and the Multifragmentation Phase Space
Fragment distributions have been measured for Au+Au collisions at [ital E]/[ital A]=100 and 1000 MeV. A high detection efficiency for fragments was obtained by combining the ALADIN spectrometer and the MSU-Miniball/WU-Miniwall array. At both energies the maximum multiplicity of intermediate mass fragments (IMF) normalized to the size of the decaying system is about one IMF per 30 nucleons but the element distributions show significant differences. Within a coalescence picture the suppression of heavy fragments in central collisions at [ital E]/[ital A]=100 MeV may be related to a reduction of the density in momentum space which is caused by the collective expansion.