Thermalized Non-Equilibrated Matter: Compound Processes and Beyond

Abstract

A characteristic feature of thermalized non-equilibrated matter is that, in spite of energy relaxation (thermalization), a phase memory of the way the strongly interacting many-body system was excited remains. In this contribution we analyze a low energy evaporating proton data in nucleon induced reactions at $\simeq$62 MeV incident energy with ${}^{197}$Au, ${}^{208}$Pb, ${}^{209}$Bi and ${}^{nat}$U. Our analysis demonstrates that the thermalized non-equilibrated matter survives a cascade of several evaporating particles. Thus the experiments show that the effect of the anomalously slow phase relaxation, with upper limits of the phase relaxation widths in the range 1-10${}^{-4}$ eV, is stable with respect to the multi-step evaporating cascade from the thermalized compound nuclei. We also briefly mention manifestations and implications of the thermalized non-equilibrated matter for some other fields.

7 pages, 6 eps figures, uses revtex