Observation of fast collinear partitioning of theAu197 +Au197system into three and four fragments of comparable size

Abstract

Collisions of a very heavy nonfusing nuclear system $^{197}\mathrm{Au}$$+$$^{197}\mathrm{Au}$ were studied at an energy of $15$ MeV/nucleon. An interesting process of violent reseparation of this heavy system into three or four fragments of comparable size was observed. In the case of ternary partitioning, either the projectile-like fragment (PLF) or target-like fragment (TLF) breaks up almost collinearly with the PLF-TLF separation axis. In the case of quaternary reactions, both PLF and TLF were observed breaking up along this direction. By comparison with a dynamical model of deep inelastic collisions it was concluded that the ternary and quaternary reactions occur in semiperipheral collisions, in a range of angular momenta corresponding to about $0.5--0.7$ of the maximum $L$ value for grazing collisions. The time elapsing from the scission of the binary PLF $+$ TLF system to the secondary scission of PLF or TLF was estimated to be of about $70--80$ fm/$c$ for the ternary reactions and $80--100$ fm/$c$ for the quaternary reactions.