Addressing the two-step scenario of high-energy ion collisions with 136Xe + p and 136Xe +12 C at 1 A.GeV in inverse kinematics, at the SPALADiN setup of GSI

Abstract

We have measured at GSI-Darmstadt (Germany) the reactions 136 Xe + p and 136 Xe +12 C, using the inverse-kinematics technique at 1 A.GeV and the large acceptance SPALADiN setup. The combination of both provides a very good coverage of the phase-space of the excited system decay channels, allowing the study of the relative importance of those decay channels, as well as a very efficient filter to reject from the detection the particles and nuclear fragments of high energy in the projectile centre-of-mass frame, essentially produced in the first-instant nucleon-nucleon collisions, prior to the decay of the excited nuclear system. Our analysis in the two-step scenario permits one to estimate on an event basis E*/A, the excitation energy per nucleon of the decaying nuclear system, and to study the E*/A dependence of the different decay channels. The E*/A range of overlap of the 136 Xe + p and 136Xe+12 C reactions is large and allows for an extensive comparison between both reactions, and therefore provides a strong test bench of the entrance-channel-independence hypothesis of the excited-system decay. We address the two-step-scenario assumption in the light of our data and their comparison with different up-to-date models.