Experimental Determination of In-Medium Cluster Binding Energies and Mott Points in Nuclear Matter

In-medium binding energies and Mott points for $d$, $t$, ${}^3\mathrm{He}$ and $\alpha$ clusters in low-density nuclear matter have been determined at specific combinations of temperature and density in low-density nuclear matter produced in collisions of $47A$ MeV ${}^{40}\mathrm{Ar}$ and ${}^{64}\mathrm{Zn}$ projectiles with ${}^{112}\mathrm{Sn}$ and ${}^{124}\mathrm{Sn}$ target nuclei. The experimentally derived values of the in-medium modified binding energies are in good agreement with recent theoretical predictions based upon the implementation of Pauli blocking effects in a quantum statistical approach.

Figure 1

Temperatures and densities sampled by the expanding IV source.

Figure 2

In-medium binding energies derived from the experiments as a function of density. $T$ and $\rho$ are changing in a correlated fashion. (See text.)

Figure 3

Comparison of experimentally derived Mott point densities and temperatures with theoretical values. Symbols represent the experimental data. Estimated errors on the temperatures are 10% and on the densities 20%. Lines show polynomial fits to the Mott points presented in Ref. 1.