Reaction mechanisms and multifragmentation processes in ⁶⁴Zn+⁵⁸Ni at 35A-79A MeV

Reaction mechanisms and multifragmentation processes have been studied for ⁶⁴Zn+⁵⁸Ni collisions at intermediate energies with the help of antisymmetrized molecular dynamics (AMD-V) model calculations. Experimental energy spectra, angular distributions, charge distributions, and isotope distributions, classified by their associated charged particle multiplicities, are compared with the results of the AMD-V calculations. In general the experimental results are reasonably well reproduced by the calculations. The multifragmentation observed experimentally at all incident energies is also reproduced by the AMD-V calculations. A detailed study of AMD-V events reveals that, in nucleon transport, the reaction shows some transparency, whereas in energy transport the reaction is much less transparent at all incident energies studied here. The transparency in the nucleon transport indicates that, even for central collisions, about 75% of the projectile nucleons appear in the forward direction. In energy transport about 80% of the initial kinetic energy of the projectile in the center-of-mass frame is dissipated. The detailed study of AMD-V events also elucidates the dynamics of the multifragmentation process. The study suggests that, at 35A MeV, the semitransparency and thermal expansion are the dominant mechanisms for the multifragmentation process, whereas at 49A MeV and higher incident energies a nuclear compression occurs at an early stage of the reaction and plays an important role in the multifragmentation process in addition to that of the thermal expansion and the semitransparency.