The efficacy of isotope thermometry: examining in the S-matrix approach

TL;DR

This paper evaluates isotope thermometry in nuclear collisions using the S-matrix approach, highlighting the importance of scattering effects and proposing a more reliable method for extracting thermodynamic parameters.

Contribution

It introduces the S-matrix approach to isotope thermometry, accounting for scattering effects and decay, improving the accuracy of temperature and volume measurements in nuclear systems.

Findings

Scattering between light fragments significantly affects temperature extraction.

Inclusion of decay processes refines thermodynamic parameter estimates.

Least-squares fitting enhances the reliability of isotope thermometry.

Abstract

Isotope thermometry, widely used to measure the temperature of a hot nuclear system formed in energetic nuclear collisions, is examined in the light of S-matrix approach to the nuclear equation of state of disassembled nuclear matter. Scattering between produced light fragment pairs, hitherto neglected, is seen to have an important bearing on the extraction of system temperature and volume at freeze-out from isotope thermometry. Taking due care of the scattering effects and decay of the primary fragments, a more reliable way to extract the nuclear thermodynamic parameters is suggested by exploiting least-squares fit to the observed fragment multiplicities.