Pseudo-critical clusterization in nuclear multifragmentation

TL;DR

This paper investigates the distribution of the largest fragment charge in nuclear multifragmentation, revealing it as a mixture of two distributions that reflect the process's time scale and energy dependence.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of pseudo-critical clusterization, linking fragment size distributions to the dynamics and energy evolution in nuclear collisions.

Findings

Largest fragment charge distribution is a mixture of two asymptotic distributions.

The relative weights of these distributions vary with bombarding energy.

Distribution characteristics are linked to the time scale of the fragmentation process.

Abstract

In this contribution we show that the biggest fragment charge distribution in central collisions of Xe+Sn leading to multifragmentation is an admixture of two asymptotic distributions observed for the lowest and highest bombarding energies. The evolution of the relative weights of the two components with bombarding energy is shown to be analogous to that observed as a function of time for the largest cluster produced in irreversible aggregation for a finite system. We infer that the size distribution of the largest fragment in nuclear multifragmentation is also characteristic of the time scale of the process, which is largely determined by the onset of radial expansion in this energy range.