Bimodal behavior of the heaviest fragment distribution in projectile fragmentation

TL;DR

This paper investigates the bimodal distribution of the heaviest fragment in heavy-ion collisions, providing evidence of phase transition signals and estimating the associated latent heat.

Contribution

It demonstrates that bimodality is robust against data selection and entrance channel effects, and offers a new estimate of the latent heat in nuclear phase transitions.

Findings

Bimodal distribution persists across different collision energies.

Bimodality is largely independent of data selection procedures.

An estimate of the latent heat of the phase transition is provided.

Abstract

The charge distribution of the heaviest fragment detected in the decay of quasi-projectiles produced in intermediate energy heavy-ion collisions has been observed to be bimodal. This feature is expected as a generic signal of phase transition in non-extensive systems. In this paper we present new analyses of experimental data from Au on Au collisions at 60, 80 and 100 MeV/nucleon showing that bimodality is largely independent of the data selection procedure, and of entrance channel effects. An estimate of the latent heat of the transition is extracted.