Even-odd effect in multifragmentation products: the footprints of evaporation

The analysis of experimental production cross-sections of intermediate-mass fragments (IMF) of several nuclear reactions at relativistic energy, measured at the FRS, GSI Darmstadt, revealed a very strong and complex even-odd staggering. The origin of this effect is related to the condensation process of hot nuclei while cooling down by evaporation. The characteristics of the staggering correlate strongly with the lowest particle separation energy of the final experimentally observed nuclei, but not with the binding energy. The study confirms the important role of the de-excitation process in multifragmentation reactions, and indicates that sequential decay strongly influences the yields of IMF, which are often used to extract information on the nature of nuclear reactions at high energies.