Short timescale behavior of colliding heavy nuclei at intermediate energies

Noncentral collisions of ¹¹⁴Cd projectiles with ⁹²Mo target nuclei at E/A=50 MeV are explored with an antisymmetrized molecular dynamics model. These collisions are found to be essentially binary in character with formation of an excited projectile-like fragment (PLF^*) and targetlike fragment (TLF^*). The average excitation energy deduced for the PLF^* and TLF^* saturates for midcentral collisions, 3.5≤b≤6 fm, with its magnitude depending on the cluster recognition time. For short cluster recognition times (t=150 fm/c), an average excitation energy as high as ≈6 MeV is determined, indicating a short statistical lifetime for the fragments produced. Evidence for such a rapid deexcitation is observed in the present calculations.