Collective expansion in central Au+Au collisions

Energy spectra for intermediate mass fragments produced in central Au+Au collisions at E/A=100 MeV indicate a collective expansion at breakup. For the first time, values for this collective expansion energy per nucleon are extracted independently for each charge. Typically, these values are one-third to one-half of the incident kinetic energy per nucleon in the cm system, but they decrease with Z sub , suggesting that all fragments do not participate equally in the collective expansion.