Properties of binary fission and multifragmentation in the transition regime

Abstract

Correlations between target fragments were measured in α- and 14N-induced reactions at 70, 250 and 800 MeV/u incident energies. The reaction mechanism is characterized by the linear momentum transfer and the excitation energy which were deduced from the kinematics and the mass distribution of the fission fragments. By selecting targets lighter than Th (Au and Ho) the yield from peripheral collisions is reduced by the increase in the fission barrier thus allowing events with the highest linear momentum transfer and excitation energy to be favoured. The results show that up to an incident energy of 800 MeV/u hot nuclei are formed which decay via normal binary fission. The linear momentum transfer is essentially constant over the covered energy range, but the excitation energy increases until the total incident energy is greater than 3 GeV. At this energy, independent of the projectile mass the fission probability of the heavy nuclei drops below 50%, while the emission of intermediate-mass fragments increases. The relative velocities between two intermediate-mass fragments exceed strongly the values of binary fission. Monte Carlo calculations show that the relative velocities between these fragments exclude a sequential emission from the recoil nucleus and support a simultaneous breakup mechanism.