CALORIC CURVE AND CONDITIONAL MOMENTS - EFFECTS OF SECONDARY FRAGMENTDECAY

We establish, within the framework of the statistical multifragmentati on model, the connection between the caloric curve and the analysis of conditional moments. In particular, we show that the conditional mome nts of fragment charge distributions peak at the region where the curv e temperature versus excitation energy shows a plateau assumed to be a signature of a phase transition. Furthermore, we show that the slopes of the moments at the peak are not influenced by secondary decay afte r the first breakup of the nucleus.