IMF IMF CORRELATIONS 3-4-FRAGMENT CORRELATIONS REVEAL DETAILS OF THE BREAKING PROCESS

The existence of the Coulomb hole in the IMF-IMF correlation function indicates the breakdown of independent sequential emission of an expan ded or nonexpanded source. The Berlin multifragmentation model allows to predict any many-fragment correlation with sufficient statistical a ccuracy and to trace it back to a few parameters describing the freeze -out configuration: At fixed freeze-out volume the width of the Coulom b hole at low relative velocities is found to be independent of the fr agmentation mode. This opens the possibility to determine the size of the freeze-out. For low excitation energies a bump is seen at lower re lative velocities in the correlation function. This rise is interprete d as a signal of a very asymmetric hot fission. The reason for the bum p is the presence of a very large fragment besides intermediate-mass f ragments in multifragmentation events. We analysed the events from dif ferent multifragmentation modes. Especially correlation functions for fragmentation events with two very large fragments in addition to an I MF pair may contain information on whether the emission process is sim ultaneous and statistical, or if not, whether the decay is occurring f irst by evaporation of smaller particles and then by fission of the re st, or in the opposite way.