Reaction dynamics and hot nuclei formation in the ³⁶Ar+⁹⁸Mo reaction at 37AMeV studied through light charged particle and γ-ray emission

Central and mid-central collisions which lead to the formation of a heavy residue in the 37A MeV ³⁶Ar+⁹⁸Mo reaction have been studied with the MEDEA multidetector array coupled to a Parallel Plate Avalanche Counter. The dependence of the high energy gamma ray and light charged particle production as a function of the linear momentum transferred to the fused system has been studied. The unique potentialities of the MEDEA detector have made it possible to follow the evolution of the reaction dynamics from the pre-equilibrium stage to the formation of a heavy compound nucleus. The analysis of the correlation between the most energetic photons and protons shows how both of them are mainly produced in the most energetic primary nucleon-nucleon collisions. The multiplicity of high energy (E_γ>30MeV) γ rays has been found to increase with the linear momentum transfer, showing the dominance of two-body dissipation in the transfer mechanism and giving a tool to correlate the momentum transfer with the centrality of the collision. Light charged particle kinetic energy spectra show how in these collisions, compound systems with excitation energies of more than 3AMeV and temperature up to 7 MeV are formed. The experimental findings are compared with Boltzmann-Nordheim-Vlasov calculations. A scenario is found where the nucleus-nucleus interaction starts with two-body nucleon-nucleon collisions in the overlap region of nuclear densities. These collisions give rise to the production of high energy nucleons and γ rays, and play a fundamental role in the energy transfer from the relative motion to internal excitation of the quasiprojectile and the target.