Thermodynamic quantities deduced from the emission at large angles of isotopically resolved composite particles

Emission yieldsY(A) of isotopically resolved intermediatemass fragments, at large angles and in a wide range ofA, are suitably analysed to evaluate the temperatureT and the total free-nucleon densityϱtF of the emission sources. For all the here studied high-energy proton-induced reactions, the evaluated temperatures are limited between ∼2 and ∼4 MeV. TheT andϱtF values found for such nuclear sources allow us to extend to lower temperatures the knowledge of the (T, ϱtF) correlation previously pointed out, for temperatures between ∼4 and ∼20 MeV, by analysing light-cluster emission in heavy-ion collisions. A nuclear-matter model is formulated in order to give a quantitative interpretation of the observed correlation. A remarkable agreement is obtained by comparing the quantitative predictions of the model with all the evaluated (T, ϱtF) pairs.