title: Bimodality as a signal of a liquid-gas phase transition in nuclei?
abstract: We use the heavy-ion phase-space exploration model to discuss the origin of the bimodality in charge asymmetry observed in nuclear reactions around the Fermi energy. We show that it may be related to the important angular momentum (spin) transferred into the quasiprojectile before secondary decay. As the spin overcomes the critical value, a sudden opening of decay channels is induced and leads to a bimodal distribution for the charge asymmetry. In the model, it is not assigned to a liquid-gas phase transition but to specific instabilities in nuclei with high spin. Therefore, we propose to use these reactions to study instabilities in rotating nuclear droplets.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire, IN2P3-CNRS/Université de Caen/ENSICAEN, 6 Boulevard Maréchal Juin, F-14050 Caen, France. lopezo@lpccaen.in2p3.fr
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Lopez
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lacroix
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Vient