Alignment and misalignment of fragment spins in 255 MeV Ar+Bi deep inelastic reactions

Angular distribution of sequential fission fragment of the heavy reaction product in coincidence with the light reaction product in the deep inelastic collision of 255 MeV 40Ar by 209Bi has been measured. For the first time, an important increase of the out-of-plane angular distribution width is observed as a function of the in-plane angle. The spins extracted from our data show clearly that the rigid rotation limit of the two nuclei is reached. The spin misalignment is preferentially located in a plane perpendicular to the line of centers of the two nuclei