3-BODY FINAL STATES IN PERIPHERAL HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS: NUCLEAR CLUSTERING STRUCTURE AND PROJECTILE EXCITATION REVISITED

Even though peripheral heavy-ion collisions are less violent than their central counterparts, the large energy exchange between the reactants often leaves the primary products in excited particle-unstable states whose subsequent decay leads to 3 or more nuclei emerging in the final exit channel. These post-reaction, predominantly sequential de-excitation processes can sometimes provide interesting structural information about the parent nuclei. In fact, provided these processes are well understood, one can employ them as probes for studying initial properties of the fragments. This report discusses results of two experiments that deal with (1) nonstatistical, rare decay modes of the projectile, and (2) internal excitation energy of the projectile- and target-like fragments in peripheral collisions. The physics addressed in each is different, but the experimental and data-analysis techniques are so similar that it is relevant to join them together.