Coulomb proximity decay: A clock for measuring the particle emission time scale

Hudan, S.; Botvina, A. S.; Alfaro, R.; Beaulieu, L.; Davin, B.; Larochelle, Y.; Lefort, T.; Viola, V. E.; Xu, H.; Yanez, R.; de Souza, R. T.; Liu, T. X.; Liu, X. D.; Lynch, W. G.; Shomin, R.; Tan, W. P.; Tsang, M. B.; Molen, A. Vander; Wagner, A.; Xi, H. F.; Charity, R. J.; Sobotka, L. G.

Coulomb proximity decay: A clock for measuring the particle emission time scale

Authors

Description

A new method to examine the time scale of particle emission from hot nuclei is explored. Excited projectile-like and target-like fragments decay as they separate following a peripheral heavy-ion collision. Their mutual Coulomb influence results in an anisotropic angular distribution of emitted particles, providing a measure of the particle emission time scale. Predictions of a schematic evaporation model are presented and compared to experimental data.
10 pages, 5 figures