Multifragmentation of very heavy nuclear systems (III):: Fragment velocity correlations and event topology at freeze-out

Kinetic energy spectra and fragment velocity correlations, simulated by means of stochastic mean-field calculations, are successfully confronted with experimental data for single multifragmenting sources prepared at the same excitation energy per nucleon in 32 A MeV Xe-129 + Sn-nat and 36 A MeV Gd-155 + U-nat central collisions. Relying thus Oil Simulations, average freeze-out times of 200-240 fm/c are estimated. The corresponding spatial distributions of fragments are more compact for the lighter system (similar to 3-4V(0) vs. similar to 8V(0)). (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.