PRODUCTION OF α-PARTICLE CONDENSATE STATES IN HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS

The fragmentation of quasi-projectiles from the nuclear reaction 40Ca+12C at 25 MeV/nucleon was used to produce excited states candidates to α-particle condensation. The experiment was performed at LNS-Catania using the CHIMERA multidetector. Accepting the emission simultaneity and equality among the α-particle kinetic energies as experimental criteria for deciding in favor of the condensate nature of an excited state, we analyze the [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] states of 12 C and the [Formula: see text] state of 16 O . A sub-class of events corresponding to the direct 3-α decay of the Hoyle state is isolated.