Correlated oscillations in the excitation functions of deep-inelastic collisions: evidence for nuclear pulsars?

Excitation functions for the strongly dissipative collision 19 F(E lab = 135–140 MeV)+89 Y with an energy step of 250 keV in the lab. system have been measured. The data are consistent with previous measurements and exhibit oscillations, which are interpreted as an indication of quantum chaotic phenomena in dissipative heavy-ion collisions. The Fourier component of the energy autocorrelation of the total projectile-like angle-integrated dissipative yield has been calculated and is found to have a pulsing behaviour with a time interval between sequential pulses equal to the period of the coherent nuclear rotation. This provides another possibility of experimentally detecting quantum chaos in dissipative heavy-ion collisions.