Multifragmentation at the balance energy of mass-asymmetric colliding nuclei

Abstract

Using the quantum molecular dynamics model, we study the role of mass asymmetry of colliding nuclei on the fragmentation at the corresponding balance energies and on their mass dependence. The study is done by keeping the total mass of the system fixed as 40, 80, 160, and 240 and by varying the mass asymmetry (defined as $\ensuremath{\eta}=\frac{{A}_{T}\ensuremath{-}{A}_{P}}{{A}_{T}+{A}_{P}}$; where ${A}_{T}$ and ${A}_{P}$ are the masses of the target and projectile, respectively) of the reaction from 0.1 to 0.7. Our results clearly indicate a sizeable effect of mass asymmetry on the multiplicity of various fragments. The mass asymmetry dependence of various fragments is found to increase with increase in total system mass (except for heavy mass fragments). Similarly to symmetric reactions, a systematic power-law mass dependence of various fragment multiplicities is also found to exist for large asymmetries.