Angular momentum transfer and spin dealignment mechanisms in damped nuclear reactions Ar+Bi and Ni+Pb

The angular momentum transferred to fragment spins has been studied in the damped nuclear reactions Ar+Bi at 255 MeV and 295 MeV and Ni+Pb at 435 MeV from measurement of the angular distribution of the fission fragments of the heavy-recoil nucleus in coincidence with the projectile-like fragment. The heavy-fragment spin is strongly aligned along the normal to the reaction plane and the rigid-rotation limit of the dinuclear system is attained. The dealignment mechanisms produce spin components mainly located in a plane approximately perpendicular to the heavy-recoil lab direction. They are well described by a dynamical model based on the nucleon exchange between the two ions during the collision. The spin-component fluctuations reach high values. In the heavy-recoil direction, these fluctuations are increasing with the total kinetic energy loss and the charge transfer from the projectile to the target. The spin values extracted from both the angular distributions and the fission probabilities are seen to be compatible.