Bimodality - a Sign of Critical Behavior in Nuclear Reactions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that bimodality in nuclear reactions indicates critical behavior, with numerical simulations revealing nonlinear dynamics and the influence of fluctuations on reaction outcomes.

Contribution

It introduces the first evidence of nonlinear dynamics in heavy ion reactions through QMD simulations showing bimodality as a sign of critical behavior.

Findings

Bimodality correlates with critical behavior in nuclear reactions.

Fluctuations from nucleon-nucleon collisions influence reaction pathways.

Scaling of the coexistence region with beam energy is reproduced.

Abstract

The recently discovered coexistence of multifragmentation and residue production for the same total transverse energy of light charged particles can be well reproduced in numerical simulations of the heavy ion reactions. A detailed analysis shows that fluctuations (introduced by elementary nucleon-nucleon collisions) determine which of the exit states is realized. Thus we observe for the first time nonlinear dynamics in heavy ion reactions. Also the scaling of the coexistence region with beam energy is well reproduced in these results from the QMD simulation program.