INDEPENDENCE OF FRAGMENT CHARGE-DISTRIBUTIONS OF THE SIZE OF HEAVY MULTIFRAGMENTING SOURCES

Charged product multiplicities and Z distributions were measured for s ingle multifragmenting sources produced in collisions between Xe-129 Sn-nat and Gd-155 + U-238 at the same available energy per nucleon. Z distributions are found identical for both reactions while fragment m ultiplicities scale as the charge of the total systems. A complete dyn amical simulation, in which multifragmentation originates in the spino dal decomposition of a finite piece of nuclear matter resulting from a n incomplete fusion of projectile and target, well accounts for this e xperimental observation. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights res erved.