Decay of hot nuclei formed with energetic antiprotons (PS208)

Energetic antiproton-nucleus interactions allow to build up thermal excitation energies exceeding 800 MeV in nuclei of masses close to 200. We found that for these high excitation energies the fission process still remains a very significant exit channel. At excitation energies close to 800 MeV the fission process approaches 20-50% of the cross section for Ho, Au and U-like nuclei depending on the fission events selection criteria. The average intermediate mass fragment multiplicity at such high excitation energies is equal to about 1 and alpha particle multiplicity is equal to about 5 for all three reactions independently of the exit channel, including fission. A transition towards the multifragmentation is not observed.