43 research outputs found
Nuclear isotope thermometry
We discuss different aspects which could influence temperatures deduced from
experimental isotopic yields in the multifragmentation process. It is shown
that fluctuations due to the finite size of the system and distortions due to
the decay of hot primary fragments conspire to blur the temperature
determination in multifragmentation reactions. These facts suggest that caloric
curves obtained through isotope thermometers, which were taken as evidence for
a first-order phase transition in nuclear matter, should be investigated very
carefully.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure
Breakup Temperature of Target Spectators in Au + Au Collisions at E/A = 1000 MeV
Breakup temperatures were deduced from double ratios of isotope yields for
target spectators produced in the reaction Au + Au at 1000 MeV per nucleon.
Pairs of He and Li isotopes and pairs of He and H
isotopes (p, d and d, t) yield consistent temperatures after feeding
corrections, based on the quantum statistical model, are applied. The
temperatures rise with decreasing impact parameter from 4 MeV for peripheral to
about 10 MeV for the most central collisions.
The good agreement with the breakup temperatures measured previously for
projectile spectators at an incident energy of 600 MeV per nucleon confirms the
observed universality of the spectator decay at relativistic bombarding
energies. The measured temperatures also agree with the breakup temperatures
predicted by the statistical multifragmentation model. For these calculations a
relation between the initial excitation energy and mass was derived which gives
good simultaneous agreement for the fragment charge correlations.
The energy spectra of light charged particles, measured at =
150, exhibit Maxwellian shapes with inverse slope parameters much
higher than the breakup temperatures. The statistical multifragmentation model,
because Coulomb repulsion and sequential decay processes are included, yields
light-particle spectra with inverse slope parameters higher than the breakup
temperatures but considerably below the measured values. The systematic
behavior of the differences suggests that they are caused by
light-charged-particle emission prior to the final breakup stage.
PACS numbers: 25.70.Mn, 25.70.Pq, 25.75.-qComment: 29 pages, TeX with 11 included figures; Revised version accepted for
publication in Z. Phys. A Two additional figure
Determination of the freeze-out temperature by the isospin thermometer
The high-resolution spectrometer FRS at GSI Darmstadt provides the full
isotopic and kinematical identification of fragmentation residues in
relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Recent measurements of the isotopic
distribution of heavy projectile fragments led to a very surprising new
physical finding: the residue production does not lose the memory of the N/Z of
the projectile ending up in a universal de-excitation corridor; an ordering of
the residues in relation to the neutron excess of the projectile has been
observed. These unexpected features can be interpreted as a new manifestation
of multifragmentation. We have found that at the last stage of the reaction the
temperature of the big clusters subjected to evaporation is limited to a
universal value. The thermometer to measure this limiting temperature is the
neutron excess of the residues.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, corrected some misprints in the abstract, to be
published in "Yadernaya Fizika" as a proceeding of the "VII International
School Seminar on Heavy-Ion Phyics", Dubna (Russia), May 27 - June 1, 200
Statistical nature of cluster emission in nuclear liquid-vapour phase coexistence
The emission of nuclear clusters is investigated within the framework of
isospin dependent lattice gas model and classical molecular dynamics model. It
is found that the emission of individual cluster which is heavier than proton
is almost Poissonian except near the transition temperature at which the system
is leaving the liquid-vapor phase coexistence and the thermal scaling is
observed by the linear Arrhenius plots which is made from the average
multiplicity of each cluster versus the inverse of temperature in the liquid
vapor phase coexistence. The slopes of the Arrhenius plots, {\it i.e.} the
"emission barriers", are extracted as a function of the mass or charge number
and fitted by the formula embodied with the contributions of the surface energy
and Coulomb interaction. The good agreements are obtained in comparison with
the data for low energy conditional barriers. In addition, the possible
influences of the source size, Coulomb interaction and "freeze-out" density and
related physical implications are discussed
Critical Behavior in Light Nuclear Systems: Experimental Aspects
An extensive experimental survey of the features of the disassembly of a
small quasi-projectile system with 36, produced in the reactions of 47
MeV/nucleon Ar + Al, Ti and Ni, has been carried
out. Nuclei in the excitation energy range of 1-9 MeV/u have been investigated
employing a new method to reconstruct the quasi-projectile source. At an
excitation energy 5.6 MeV/nucleon many observables indicate the presence
of maximal fluctuations in the de-excitation processes. The fragment
topological structure shows that the rank sorted fragments obey Zipf's law at
the point of largest fluctuations providing another indication of a liquid gas
phase transition. The caloric curve for this system shows a monotonic increase
of temperature with excitation energy and no apparent plateau. The temperature
at the point of maximal fluctuations is MeV. Taking this
temperature as the critical temperature and employing the caloric curve
information we have extracted the critical exponents , and
from the data. Their values are also consistent with the values of the
universality class of the liquid gas phase transition. Taken together, this
body of evidence strongly suggests a phase change in an equilibrated mesoscopic
system at, or extremely close to, the critical point.Comment: Physical Review C, in press; some discussions about the validity of
excitation energy in peripheral collisions have been added; 24 pages and 32
figures; longer abstract in the preprin
Isospin influences on particle emission and critical phenomenon in nuclear dissociation
Features of particle emission and critical point behavior are investigated as
functions of the isospin of disassembling sources and temperature at a moderate
freeze-out density for medium-size Xe isotopes in the framework of isospin
dependent lattice gas model. Multiplicities of emitted light particles,
isotopic and isobaric ratios of light particles show the strong dependence on
the isospin of the dissociation source, but double ratios of light isotope
pairs and the critical temperature determined by the extreme values of some
critical observables are insensitive to the isospin of the systems. Values of
the power law parameter of cluster mass distribution, mean multiplicity of
intermediate mass fragments (), information entropy () and Campi's
second moment () also show a minor dependence on the isospin of Xe
isotopes at the critical point. In addition, the slopes of the average
multiplicites of the neutrons (), protons (), charged particles
(), and IMFs (), slopes of the largest fragment mass number
(), and the excitation energy per nucleon of the disassembling source
() to temperature are investigated as well as variances of the
distributions of , , , , and . It
is found that they can be taken as additional judgements to the critical
phenomena.Comment: 9 Pages, 8 figure
Caloric curves and critical behavior in nuclei
Data from a number of different experimental measurements have been used to
construct caloric curves for five different regions of nuclear mass. These
curves are qualitatively similar and exhibit plateaus at the higher excitation
energies. The limiting temperatures represented by the plateaus decrease with
increasing nuclear mass and are in very good agreement with results of recent
calculations employing either a chiral symmetry model or the Gogny interaction.
This agreement strongly favors a soft equation of state. Evidence is presented
that critical excitation energies and critical temperatures for nuclei can be
determined over a large mass range when the mass variations inherent in many
caloric curve measurements are taken into account.Comment: In response to referees comments we have improved the discussion of
the figures and added a new figure showing the relationship between the
effective level density and the excitation energy. The discussion has been
reordered and comments are made on recent data which support the hypothesis
of a mass dependence of caloric curve