Nuclear stopping and energy removal in central collisions between heavy ions of 8-115 AMeV

Central and mid-central collisions have been studied for 40Ar ⁺ Cu, Ag and Au from 8 to 115 A MeV. Slow moving heavy residual nuclei were observed along with near 4π detection (including ~ 0.5° to 165° in the lab.) of light charged particles and fragments. A continuous increase in the multiplicities from the most violent collisions is observed with increasing projectile energy. The heavy residual nuclei are found to accept a majority fraction of the projectile momentum only up to ~ 44 A MeV, but then to yield this majority fraction to the ejectile spray for 65-115 A MeV. This confirms a dominance of familiar incomplete fusion processes up to 44 A MeV, but then demonstrates a succession to splintering central collisions, a new reaction class for the Fermi energy domain. For the central collisions, isotropic and forward-peaked components in the frame of the heaviest fragment are separated for each ejectile type. The nuclear stopping is characterized via average longitudinal momenta for the heaviest fragment and for each ejectile type. Comparison of measured values of longitudinal volecity for the heaviest fragment with predictions of the Boltzmann- Uehling-Uhlenbeck (BUU) model shows the over estimation of nuclear stopping by the model. Ejectiles emitted isotropically in the frame of the heaviest fragment define average deposition energies that reach 1-2 GeV, but there is no clear signature for a liquid-gas phase transition. Collective tranverse flow is measured by azimuthal correlation functions between each ejectile and the reaction plane, determined by vector summation of projectile-like-fragments. The energy at which collective transverse flow in the reaction plane disappears, termed the balance energy, is found to decrease as the mass of the target increases. The disassembly of the heaviest nuclei for these relatively high energy reactions is compared to calculations by multifragmentation models. Large divergences appear between the experimental data and calculated values. While the models predict the disappearance of heavy residual fragments, we find that the heavy residual nuclei remain for most central collisions even in reactions with 115 A MeV ⁴⁰Ar. The balance of the deposition energy between bond breaking and ejectile kinetic energy favors the former in the model but favors the latter for the isotropic emission ensemble.