Heating nuclei with energetic antiprotons

Heating up a nucleus by means of an antiproton annihilating on its surface offers in principle several advantages over heavy-ion collisions. Experiments performed at Low-Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) at CERN with beams of 200 MeV/c, 1.2 GeV/c and 2 GeV/c antiprotons are described. The most important issues addressed in these experiments are the assessment of the heat energy deposited into the host nucleus and the amount of mass and energy losses suffered during the thermalization stage. The former issue is investigated by measuring the multiplicities of evaporated neutrons and light charged fragments while the latter is tackled by means of inclusive d2σ/dEdΩ distributions measured for various particles. (K.A.)