Evaporation residue as a dominant exit channel at high thermal energies in 3He + Ag reactions

In the reaction He-3 (1.8 GeV) + Ag-nat, events are observed with a heavy fragment(HF), A greater than or equal to 10, in coincidence with charged particles detected over 70% of 4 pi solid angle. Calorimetric measurements show high thermal excitation energies of the target primary fragment: 6-8 MeV per nucleon for HF mass greater than or similar to 45. For these excitation energies, the probability for having an evaporative residue is shown to be unexpectedly high when compared with current multifragmentation models. This result is interpreted as linked to the use of light ion projectiles at relatively low incident energy. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.