2008/12/31 by Eric Bonnet, E. Bonnet, Damien Mercier +27 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #Theoretical and Computational Physics #nucl-ex
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.103.072701
published as Physical Review Letters 103 (2009) 072701 · 5 pages, submitted to PRL
arxiv created 2009/07/09 · openalex publication_date 2009/08/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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.