HEATING NUCLEAR-MATTER WITH GEV HE-3 BEAMS

The heating curve for hot nuclei formed in the 4.8 GeV He-3 + Ag-nat, Au-197 reactions has been derived from reconstructed excitation-energy distributions and temperatures based on H-2.3/He-3,He-4 isotope ratio s. Intranuclear-cascade predictions over-estimate the excitation-energ y distributions for hot thermal-like residues, but are in general agre ement with the data when contributions from preequilibrium emission ar e included. Both targets exhibit nearly an identical temperature vs. e xcitation energy dependence. The heating curve initially increases rap idly, undergoes a slops change near E/A = 2-3 MeV, and then follows a gradual monotonic increase up to E/A = 10 MeV. The results are in qu alitative agreement with predictions of EES and SMM multifragmentation models. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.