Production of α-particle condensate states in heavy-ion collisions

The fragmentation of quasi-projectiles from the nuclear reaction 40Ca+12C at 25 MeV/nucleon was used to produce excited states candidates to α-particle condensation. The experiment was performed at LNS-Catania using the CHIMERA multidetector. Accepting the emission simultaneity and equality among the α-particle kinetic energies as experimental criteria for deciding in favor of the condensate nature of an excited state, we analyze the 02+ and 22+ states of 12C and the 06+ state of 16O. A sub-class of events corresponding to the direct 3-α decay of the Hoyle state is isolated. (author)