Eur. Phys. J. A (2006) 30: 215-226
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2006-10118-5

Dynamics and Thermodynamics with Nuclear Degrees of Freedom

Calorimetry

¹ IUCF and Department of Chemistry, Indiana University, 47405, Bloomington, IN, USA
² LPC/Ensicaen, 6 Bd du Maréchal Juin, 14050, Caen Cedex, France

^* e-mail: viola@indiana.edu

Received: 12 June 2006
Accepted: 17 July 2006
Published online: 25 October 2006

Abstract

Methods for determining the heat content E ^*/A of hot nuclei formed in energetic nuclear reactions are discussed. The primary factors involved in converting raw data into thermal physics distributions include: 1) design of the detector array, 2) constraints imposed by the physics of the reaction mechanism, and 3) assumptions involved in converting the filtered data into E ^*/A. The two primary sources of uncertainty in the calorimetry are the elimination of nonequilibrium emissions from the event components and accounting for the contribution of neutron emission to the excitation energy sum.