Statistical calculations of nuclear fragment distributions - art. no. 044603

The recursive techniques developed by Mekjian and collaborators for exact c alculations of canonical partition functions of fragmenting systems are ext ended to allow the determination of fragment multiplicity distributions. Th e fragment multiplicity distribution is shown to become strongly super-Pois sonian at the critical temperature. This behavior is shown to be highly sen sitive to Coulomb effects and to whether energy is strictly conserved (the microcanonical ensemble). Additionally, a method is presented for generatin g events from the partition functions, which also permits the inclusion of hard-sphere interactions between fragments.