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A. Chbihi

Publications and source records attributed to A. Chbihi.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources
arXiv2004

Directed and elliptic flow in Au + Au at intermediate energies

Directed and elliptic flow for the Au + Au system at incident energies between 40 and 150 MeV per nucleon has been measured using the INDRA 4 pi multi-detector. For semi-central collisions, the elliptic flow of Z <= 2 particles switches from in-plane to out-of-plane enhancement at around 100 MeV per nucleon, in good agreement with the result reported by the FOPI Collaboration. The directed flow changes sign at a bombarding energy between 50 and 60 MeV per nucleon and remains negative at lower energies. The conditions for the appearance and possible origins of negative flow are discussed.

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arXiv2003

Dynamical effects in multifragmentation at intermediate energies

The fragmentation of the quasi-projectile is studied with the INDRA multidetector for different colliding systems and incident energies in the Fermi energy range. Different experimental observations show that a large part of the fragmentation is not compatible with the statistical fragmentation of a fully equilibrated nucleus. The study of internal correlations is a powerful tool, especially to evidence entrance channel effects. These effects have to be included in the theoretical descriptions of nuclear multifragmentation.

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arXiv2003

Fragmentation in Peripheral Heavy-Ion Collisions: from Neck Emission to Spectator Decays

Invariant cross sections of intermediate mass fragments in peripheral collisions of Au on Au at incident energies between 40 and 150 AMeV have been measured with the 4-pi multi-detector INDRA. The maximum of the fragment production is located near mid-rapidity at the lower energies and moves gradually towards the projectile and target rapidities as the energy is increased. Schematic calculations within an extended Goldhaber model suggest that the observed cross-section distributions and their evolution with energy are predominantly the result of the clustering requirement for the emerging fragments and of their Coulomb repulsion from the projectile and target residues. The quantitative comparison with transverse energy spectra and fragment charge distributions emphasizes the role of hard scattered nucleons in the fragmentation process.

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arXiv2002

Characteristics of the fragments produced in central collisions of 129Xe+ natSn from 32 to 50 AMeV

Characteristics of the primary fragments produced in central collisions of 129Xe + natSn from 32 to 50 AMeV have been obtained. By using the correlation technique for the relative velocity between light charged particles (LCP) and fragments, we were able to extract the multiplicities and average kinetic energy of secondary evaporated LCP. We then reconstructed the size and excitation energy of the primary fragments. For each bombarding energy a constant value of the excitation energy per nucleon over the whole range of fragment charge has been found. This value saturates at 3 AMeV for beam energies 39 AMeV and above. The corresponding secondary evaporated LCP represent less than 40% of all produced particles and decreases down to 23% for 50 AMeV. The experimental characteristics of the primary fragments are compared to the predictions of statistical multifragmentation model (SMM) calculations. Reasonable agreement between the data and the calculation has been found for any given incident energy. However SMM fails to reproduce the trend of the excitation function of the primary fragment excitation energy and the amount of secondary evaporated LCP's.

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arXiv2002

Transverse Velocity Scaling in Au+Au Fragmentation

Invariant transverse-velocity spectra of intermediate-mass fragments were measured with the 4-pi multi-detector system INDRA for collisions of Au on Au at incident energies between 40 and 150 MeV per nucleon. Their scaling properties as a function of incident energy and atomic number Z are used to distinguish and characterize the emissions in (i) peripheral collisions at the projectile and target rapidities, and in (ii) central and (iii) peripheral collisions near mid-rapidity. The importance of dynamical effects is evident in all three cases and their origin is discussed.

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arXiv2002

Dynamics and thermodynamics of phase transition in hot nuclei

The dynamics and thermodynamics of phase transition in hot nuclei are studied through experimental results on multifragmentation of heavy systems (A>200) formed in central heavy ion collisions. Different signals indicative of a phase transition studied in the INDRA collaboration are presented and their consistency is stressed.

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arXiv2002

Compatibility of localized wave packets and unrestricted single particle dynamics for cluster formation in nuclear collisions

Antisymmetrized molecular dynamics with quantum branching is generalized so as to allow finite time duration of the unrestricted coherent mean field propagation which is followed by the decoherence into wave packets. In this new model, the wave packet shrinking by the mean field propagation is respected as well as the diffusion, so that it predicts a one-body dynamics similar to that in mean field models. The shrinking effect is expected to change the diffusion property of nucleons in nuclear matter and the global one-body dynamics. The central $\xenon+\tin$ collisions at 50 MeV/nucleon are calculated by the models with and without shrinking, and it is shown that the inclusion of the wave packet shrinking has a large effect on the multifragmentation in a big expanding system with a moderate expansion velocity.

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arXiv2002

Fragment production in central heavy-ion collisions: reconciling the dominance of dynamics with observed phase transition signals through universal fluctuations

Fragment production in central collisions of Xe+Sn has been systematically studied with the INDRA multidetector from 25 to 150 AMeV. The predominant role of collision dynamics is evidenced in multiple intermediate mass fragment production even at the lowest energies, around the so-called "multifragmentation threshold". For beam energies 50 AMeV and above, a promising agreement with suitably modified Antisymmetrised Molecular Dynamics calculations has been achieved. Intriguingly the same reactions have recently been interpreted as evidence for a liquid-gas phase transition in thermodynamically equilibrated systems. The universal fluctuation theory, thanks to its lack of any equilibrium hypothesis, shows clearly that in all but a tiny minority of carefully-selected central collisions fragment production is incompatible with either critical or phase coexistence behaviour. On the other hand, it does not exclude some similarity with aggregation scenarios such as the lattice-gas or Fisher droplet models.

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arXiv2002

Universal fluctuations: a new approach to the study of "phase transitions" in intermediate energy heavy ion collisions

The universal theory of order parameter fluctuations (delta scaling laws) is applied to a wide range of intermediate energy heavy-ion collision data obtained with INDRA. This systematic study confirms that the observed fragment production is compatible with aggregation scenarios for in- or out-of-equilibrium continuous phase transitions, while not showing any sign of critical behaviour or phase coexistence. We stress the importance of the methodology employed in order to gain further insight into the mechanism(s) responsible.

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arXiv2001

Evidence for Thermal Equilibration in Multifragmentation Reactions probed with Bremsstrahlung Photons

The production of nuclear bremsstrahlung photons (E$_γ>$ 30 MeV) has been studied in inclusive and exclusive measurements in four heavy-ion reactions at 60{\it A} MeV. The measured photon spectra, angular distributions and multiplicities indicate that a significant part of the hard-photons are emitted in secondary nucleon-nucleon collisions from a thermally equilibrated system. The observation of the thermal component in multi-fragment $^{36}$Ar+$^{197}$Au reactions suggests that the breakup of the thermalized source produced in this system occurs on a rather long time-scale.

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arXiv2001

Response of CsI(Tl) scintillators over a large range in energy and atomic number of ions (Part I): recombination and delta -- electrons

A simple formalism describing the light response of CsI(Tl) to heavy ions, which quantifies the luminescence and the quenching in terms of the competition between radiative transitions following the carrier trapping at the Tl activator sites and the electron-hole recombination, is proposed. The effect of the delta rays on the scintillation efficiency is for the first time quantitatively included in a fully consistent way. The light output expression depends on four parameters determined by a procedure of global fit to experimental data.

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arXiv2001

Response of CsI(Tl) scintillators over a large range in energy and atomic number of ions (Part II): calibration and identification in the INDRA array

The light output of the 324 CsI(Tl) scintillators of INDRA has been measured over a large range both in energy: 1 - 80 AMeV and in atomic number of incident ions: Z = 1 - 60. An analytical expression for the nonlinear total light response as a function of the energy and the identity of the ion is proposed. It depends on four parameters. For three of them, connected to CsI(Tl) intrinsic characteristics, recommended fixed values are proposed. They are issued from the comparative study of the forward scintillators of INDRA, based on intermediate mass fragment data. The fourth one, related to light collection and to the gain of the associated photomultiplier, is particular and may be accurately obtained afterwards, from light charged particle data. Two applications are presented: fragment identification in telescopes using a CsI(Tl) crystal as residual energy detector and the scintillator energy calibration. The results are successfully confronted to heavy fragment experimental data.

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arXiv2001

Experimental evidence for spinodal decomposition in multifragmentation of heavy systems

Multifragmentation of fused systems was observed for central collisions between 32 AMeV 129Xe and Sn, and 36 AMeV 155Gd and U. Previous extensive comparisons between the two systems led to the hypothesis of spinodal decomposition of finite systems as the origin of multifragmentation for incident energies around 30 AMeV. New results on velocity and charge correlations of fragments bring strong arguments in favor of this interpretation.

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arXiv2001

Universal fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions in the Fermi energy domain

We discuss the scaling laws of both the charged fragments multiplicity fluctuations and the charge of the largest fragment fluctuations for Xe+Sn collisions in the range of bombarding energies between 25 MeV/A and 50 MeV/A. We show close to E_{lab}=32 MeV/A the transition in the fluctuation regime of the charge of the largest fragment which is compatible with the transition from the ordered to disordered phase of excited nuclear matter. The size (charge) of the largest fragment is closely related to the order parameter characterizing this process.

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arXiv2000

Effect of the intermediate velocity emissions on the quasi-projectile properties for the Ar+Ni system at 95 A.MeV

The quasi-projectile (QP) properties are investigated in the Ar+Ni collisions at 95 A.MeV taking into account the intermediate velocity emission. Indeed, in this reaction, between 52 and 95 A.MeV bombarding energies, the number of particles emitted in the intermediate velocity region is related to the overlap volume between projectile and target. Mean transverse energies of these particles are found particularly high. In this context, the mass of the QP decreases linearly with the impact parameter from peripheral to central collisions whereas its excitation energy increases up to 8 A.MeV. These results are compared to previous analyses assuming a pure binary scenario.

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arXiv2000

Thermal bremsstrahlung probing the thermodynamical state of multifragmenting systems

Inclusive and exclusive hard-photon (E$_γ>$ 30 MeV) production in five different heavy-ion reactions ($^{36}$Ar+$^{197}$Au, $^{107}$Ag, $^{58}$Ni, $^{12}$C at 60{\it A} MeV and $^{129}$Xe+$^{120}$Sn at 50{\it A} MeV) has been studied coupling the TAPS photon spectrometer with several charged-particle multidetectors covering more than 80% of 4$π$. The measured spectra, slope parameters and source velocities as well as their target-dependence, confirm the existence of thermal bremsstrahlung emission from secondary nucleon-nucleon collisions that accounts for roughly 20% of the total hard-photon yield. The thermal slopes are a direct measure of the temperature of the excited nuclear systems produced during the reaction.

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arXiv1999

Experimental and Theoretical Search for a Phase Transition in Nuclear Fragmentation

Phase transitions of small isolated systems are signaled by the shape of the caloric equation of state e^*(T), the relationship between the excitation energy per nucleon e^* and temperature. In this work we compare the experimentally deduced e^*(T) to the theoretical predictions. The experimentally accessible temperature was extracted from evaporation spectra from incomplete fusion reactions leading to residue nuclei. The experimental e^*(T) dependence exhibits the characteristic S-shape at e^* = 2-3 MeV/A. Such behavior is expected for a finite system at a phase transition. The observed dependence agrees with predictions of the MMMC-model, which simulates the total accessible phase-space of fragmentation.

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