Thermodynamic Variables from Spectator Decay

Abstract

New results for the masses, excitation energies, temperatures, and densities of excited spectator systems at breakup are presented. They were obtained in two recent experiments with the ALADIN spectrometer at SIS in which reactions of Au-197 on Au-197 in the regime of relativistic energies up to 1 GeV per nucleon were studied. The methods used to extract these thermodynamic variables are discussed.Comment: 17 pages, TeX with 10 included figures; To appear in the proceedings of the 14th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Snowbird, Utah, January 31 - February 7, 1998; also available from http://www-kp3.gsi.de/www/kp3/aladin_publications.htm