Multifragmentation and phase transition for hot nuclei

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in understanding multifragmentation and phase transitions in hot nuclei, highlighting experimental findings from the INDRA array and their implications for nuclear physics.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the radial energies, freeze-out properties, and bimodal behavior of hot nuclei, including the first estimate of latent heat of phase transition.

Findings

Radial collective energies influence fragment partitions.

Enhanced understanding of freeze-out conditions.

First quantitative estimate of latent heat in nuclear phase transition.

Abstract

Recent important progress on the knowledge of multifragmentation and phase transition for hot nuclei, thanks to the high detection quality of the INDRA array, is reported. It concerns i) the radial collective energies involved in hot fragmenting nuclei/sources produced in central and semi- peripheral collisions and their influence on the observed fragment partitions, ii) a better knowledge of freeze-out properties obtained by means of a simulation based on all the available experimental information and iii) the quantitative study of the bimodal behaviour of the heaviest fragment distribution for fragmenting hot heavy quasi-projectiles which allows the extraction, for the first time, of an estimate of the latent heat of the phase transition.