Probing the Concept of Statistical Independence of Intermediate-Mass Fragment Production in Heavy-Ion Collisions

It is studied to what extent the characteristics of multi-IMF (intermediate-mass fragments) events can be derived from the properties of the observed single-IMF transverse-energy spectra. It is found that the spectra of total transverse IMF energy (Et) in multi-IMF events are well represented by “synthetic” spectra obtained by a multiple folding of the single-IMF transverse energy spectrum. Further, it is shown that, using the experimental IMF multiplicity distribution in the folding procedure, it is possible to reproduce the observed trends in the IMF multiplicity distributions for fixed values of the total transverse energy Et. Accordingly, the “synthetic” multiplicity distributions show a binomial reducibility and an Arrhenius-like scaling similar to that reported in the recent literature. Consistent with the concept of statistical independence of multiple IMF production, similar results are obtained when the above folding-type synthesis is replaced with one based on mixing of events with different IMF multiplicities. For statistically independent IMF emission, the observed binomial reducibility and Arrhenius-like scaling are shown to be merely reflections of the shape of the single-IMF transverse-energy spectrum. Hence, a valid interpretation of these IMF distributions in terms of a particular production scenario has to explain independently the observed shape of the single-IMF Et spectrum.