An extensive experimental survey of the features of the disassembly of a
small quasi-projectile system with A∼ 36, produced in the reactions of 47
MeV/nucleon 40Ar + 27Al, 48Ti and 58Ni, 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 8.3±0.5 MeV. Taking this
temperature as the critical temperature and employing the caloric curve
information we have extracted the critical exponents β, γ and
σ 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