Statistical and sequential breakup of ²⁴Mg in peripheral reactions at intermediate energies

The fragmentation of the projectile ²⁴Mg, excited in peripheral collisions on ¹⁹⁷Au and ¹²C targets, has been investigated at 25A MeV and 35A MeV with a large scintillator detector array. Projectile breakup events were selected in the off-line analysis, by requiring that the total detected charge in one event be equal to that of the projectile. The projectile-like nucleus (PLN) excitation energies have been reconstructed and compared to results at 50A MeV and 70A MeV. The branching ratios of 2-, 4-, 5-, and 6-fold decays show a linear dependence, characteristic of statistical decay. Global variable analysis in terms of relative angles was applied to the six-alpha exit channel and the corresponding data have been compared to theoretical calculations based on simultaneous and sequential binary decay. The latter have been divided into sequential fission and sequential evaporation decays. The data has been found to be consistent with a sequential evaporation decay mechanism for a wide range of the intermediate-energy domain.