Multifragmentation induced by light relativistic projectiles and heavy ions: similarities and differences

The experimental data on fragment multiplicities, their energy and charge distributions, the emission times are considered for the nuclear multifragmentation process induced by relativistic light projectiles (protons, helium) and heavy ions. With light projectiles, the multifragmentation is a pure 'thermal' process, well described by the statistical models. Heavy-ion-induced multifragmentation is influenced by dynamic effects related first of all to the compression of the system in the collision. But statistical models can also be applied to rendering the partition of the system if the excitation energy is less than 10 MeV/nucleon and compression is modest. For the central collision of heavy ions the statistical approach fails to describe the data