Decay of hot nuclei produced by relativistic light ions

In collisions of light relativistic projectiles (p, 4He) with heavy nuclei (Au) very excited target spectators are created, which decay via multiple emission of intermediate mass fragments. It was found that the mean IMF multiplicities are equal (within 15%) to 2.0, 2.6 and 3.0 at proton energies 2.16, 3.6 and 8.1 GeV respectively. These values are comparable with those obtained with heavy ions in the same beam energy range. This is considered to indicate that this observable is not sensitive to the collision dynamics and is determined by the phase space factor. IMF energy spectra are described by the statistical model of multifragmentation neglecting dynamics of the expansion stage before the break up. The expansion velocity is estimated to be ≤ 0.02 c. The mean lifetime of a fragmentating system is found to be ≤ 75 fm/c from IMF-IMF-angular correlations for 4He (14.6 GeV) +Au collisions. The results support a scenario of true 'thermal' multifragmentation. 26 refs., 10 figs., 1 tab