Determination of the excitation energy and angular momentum of the quasi-projectiles produced in the heavy ion collisions Xe + Sn

This work is a contribution to the study of properties of hot nuclei formed in heavy ion collisions at intermediate energies. The experiment has been performed with the INDRA multidetector. It is shown that most of the reaction cross section is associated with binary dissipative collisions, accompanied by the production of particles from a region between the two reaction partners. This study is focussed on excitation energy and angular momentum of projectile-like fragment (PLF) in 129Xe + natSn reactions from 25 to 50 MeV per nucleon. Several methods are used to characterize hot nuclei (velocity, charge, mass and excitation energy). All these methods are compared between them and indicate that high energies are deposited in the nuclei during collision (it may exceed the nucleus binding energy). The angular momentum transferred into intrinsic spin to PLF in the peripheral collisions has been deduced from angular distributions and kinetic energies of the emitted light charged particles (atomic number smaller ar equal to 2). Both methods agree qualitatively. The spin values decrease with the violence of the collision. These values correspond to values averaged over the whole deexcitation chain of nuclei. The predictions of transport models reproduce qualitatively the most peripheral collisions and suggest that high spins are transferred to PLF (from 30 to 50 ℎ). Larger angular momentum values are observed at the lowest incident energy. The time hierarchy in the evaporation process and the role of mid-rapidity emission are also discussed. (author)