Expansion Time of the Thermal Multifragmentation in the Interaction of 22 GeV Carbon Nuclei with a Gold Target

The relative angle correlations of intermediate mass fragments has been studied for 12C + Au collisions at 22 GeV. Strong suppression at small angles is observed which is due to the Coulomb repulsion of fragments. The experimental correlation function was compared to that obtained by the multibody Coulomb trajectory calculations with the various decay time of fragmenting system. It is found that the average decay time of fragmenting system is less than 59 ± 11 fm c–1.