Role of statistical fluctuations for the interpretation of Arrhenius-type plots in nuclear multifragmentation

Abstract

The role of statistical fluctuations for the interpretation of Arrhenius-type plots in nuclear multifragmentation, representing scaling with transverse kinetic energy, is explored. It is shown that the observed striking ``Arrhenius''-like correlations and binomial-like multiplicity distributions do not provide evidence for an underlying thermal scaling (with excitation energy or temperature) of intermediate-mass fragment (IMF) pro-duction. In fact, these striking features appear inconsistent with a dominantly thermal IMF production scenario.