CALORIC CURVE IN AU+AU COLLISIONS

Realistic caloric curves are obtained for the Au-197+Au-197 reaction w ith incident energy ranging from 35 to 130 MeV/nucleon in the dynamic statistical multifragmentation model. It is shown that for the excitat ion energy 3 to 8 MeV/nucleon, the temperature remains constant in the range 5 to 6 MeV, which is close to the experiment. The mechanism of energy deposition through the tripartition of the colliding system env isaged in this model together with interfragment nuclear interaction a re found to play important roles. A possible signature of a liquid-gas phase transition is seen in the specific heat distribution calculated from these caloric curves, and the critical temperature is found to b e similar to 6 to 6.5 MeV.