Bimodal behavior of the heaviest fragment distribution in projectile fragmentation

Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Aug 14;103(7):072701. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.072701. Epub 2009 Aug 13.

Abstract

The charge distribution of the heaviest fragment detected in the decay of quasiprojectiles produced in intermediate energy heavy-ion collisions has been observed to be bimodal. This feature is expected as a generic signal of phase transition in nonextensive systems. In this Letter, we present new analyses of experimental data from Au on Au collisions at 60, 80, and 100 MeV/nucleon showing that bimodality is largely independent of the data selection procedure and of entrance channel effects. An estimate of the latent heat of the transition is extracted.