Deexcitation of primary projectile-like fragments in the reaction 40Ca+natCu at 35 MeV/nucleon: Comparison with sequential binary decay and percolation models

This article presents a new analysis of primary projectile-like fragments produced in peripheral and mid-peripheral collisions in the reaction 40Ca+natCu at 35 MeV/nucleon. The data were obtained using the charged particle AMPHORA array. The distributions of multiplicity, inclusive charge, and heaviest fragment charge of the deexcitation products as well as the moments characterizing the single event charge partitions are remarkably well reproduced by a statistical sequential binary decay model even up to excitation energies of more than 8 MeV/nucleon. The results produced by the sequential binary decay model and a simple bond percolation model are qualitatively very similar. However the sequential binary decay mechanism leads to charge fluctuations which are in better agreement with the data than those predicted by the percolation model