Bimodal behavior of the heaviest fragment distribution in projectile fragmentation

Eric Bonnet (1, 2) , D. Mercier (3, 4) , Bernard Borderie (1) , F. Gulminelli (4) , Marie-France Rivet (1) , B. Tamain (4) , R. Bougault (4) , A. Chbihi (2) , R. Dayras (5) , J.D. Frankland (2) , E. Galichet (3, 6) , F. Gagnon-Moisan (1) , D. Guinet (3) , P. Lautesse (3) , J. Lukasik (7) , N. Le Neindre (4) , M. Pârlog (4) , E. Rosato (8) , R. Roy (9) , M. Vigilante (8) , J.P. Wieleczko (2) , B. Zwieglinski (10)

1 IPNO - Institut de Physique Nucléaire d'Orsay
2 GANIL - Grand Accélérateur National d'Ions Lourds
3 IPNL - Institut de Physique Nucléaire de Lyon
4 LPCC - Laboratoire de physique corpusculaire de Caen
5 IRFU - Institut de Recherches sur les lois Fondamentales de l'Univers
6 CNAM Paris - Centre d'enseignement Cnam Paris
7 INSTITUTE OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS IFJ-PAN - Institute of Nuclear Physics IFJ-PAN
8 Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche e Sezione INFN
9 Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire
10 ANDRZEJ SOLTAN INST. FOR NUCLEAR STUDIES - Andrzej Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies

The charge distribution of the heaviest fragment detected in the decay of quasi-projectiles produced in intermediate energy heavy-ion collisions has been observed to be bimodal. This feature is expected as a generic signal of phase transition in non-extensive systems. In this paper we present new analyses of experimental data from Au on Au collisions at 60, 80 and 100 MeV/nucleon showing that bimodality is largely independent of the data selection procedure, and of entrance channel effects. An estimate of the latent heat of the transition is extracted.

Mots clés: Phase transition; Bimodal distribution; Charge of the biggest fragment; projectile fragmentation

Domaines: Physique Nucléaire Expérimentale [nucl-ex]

Eric Bonnet, D. Mercier, Bernard Borderie, F. Gulminelli, Marie-France Rivet, et al.. Bimodal behavior of the heaviest fragment distribution in projectile fragmentation. 2008. ⟨hal-00345772v2⟩