Production and desexcitation of hot nuclei in 40Ar + 238U collisions at 27 MeV/u

The selection of hot nuclei can be achieved through the folding angle of the coincident fission fragments. At this bombarding energy a distinct fusion component shows up in the folding angle correlation function corresponding to the most central collisions. The mass of the fission fragments decreases with increasing linear momentum transfer; the energy dissipated into the target nucleus is proportional to the momentum transfer. The mass distribution full width at half maximum increases with dissipated energy and this can be understood as the result of thermal fluctuations. The light charged particles detected in coincidence with the fission fragments exhibit, at least backwards, the characteristic behaviour of evaporative particles from a thermally equilibrated source. The fused nucleus is revealed as the dominant emitter. The observed energy spectra can be reproduced in a Monte Carlo type simulation assuming that about 80% of the particles arise from the fused nuclei and only 20 % from the fully accelerated fission fragments. A detailed analysis of the shape of the spectra allows to precise the average characteristics of the emitter: it is quite deformed has a very broad spin distribution and a temperature from 4 to 5 MeV. All these characteristics are consistently deduced in semi-classical dynamical calculations based on the Landau-Vlasov equation. The pre-fission particle emission probabilities are shown to be much larger than would predict a purely statistical model for such heavy and hot nuclei. Such a behaviour can only be understood if the dynamics of the collision is taken into account