Isotopic effects in multifragmentation and the nuclear equation of state

Isotopic effects in spectator fragmentations following heavy-ion collisions at relativistic energies are investigated using data from recent exclusive experiments with SIS beams at GSI. Reactions of 12C on 112,124Sn at incident energies 300 and 600 MeV per nucleon were studied with the INDRA multidetector while the fragmentation of stable 124Sn and radioactive 107Sn and 124La projectiles was studied with the ALADIN spectrometer. The global characteristics of the reactions are very similar. This includes the rise and fall of fragment production and deduced observables as, e.g., the breakup temperature obtained from double ratios of isotope yields. The mass distributions depend strongly on the neutron-to-proton ratio of the decaying system, as expected for a simultaneous statistical breakup. The ratios of light-isotope yields from neutron-rich and neutron-poor systems follow the law of isoscaling. The deduced scaling parameters decrease strongly with increasing centrality to values smaller than 50% of those obtained for the peripheral event groups. This is not compensated by an equivalent rise of the breakup temperatures which suggests a reduction of the symmetry term required in a liquid-drop description of the fragments at freeze-out. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]