Fragmentation in central collisions of heavy systems

One of the goals of heavy ion reaction studies is to understand the fragmentation of hot nuclei. The LBL/GSI Plastic Ball detector system has been used to achieve a very high solid angle for detection of light and medium-heavy fragments emitted in 200 Mev/A Au + Au and Au + Fe reactions. The simultaneous measurement of almost all of the nucleons and nuclei resulting from each collision allows an estimation of the total charged particle multiplicity and hence the impact parameter. By choosing subsets of the data corresponding to a peripheral or central collision, the assumptions inherent in various models of nuclear fragmentation can be tested. 3 refs., 3 figs.