Dynamics and thermodynamics of fragment emission from excited sources

Abstract

In this paper we study the process of fragmentation of highly excited Lennard-Jones drops by introducing the concept of emitted fragments (clusters recognizable in configuration space which live more than a minimum lifetime). We focus on the dynamics and thermodynamics of the emitted sources, and show, among other things, that this kind of process can not be cast into a sequential or simultaneous one, and how a local equilibrium scenario comes up, allowing us to define and explore a local temperature, which turns out to be a strongly time-dependent quantity.

9 pages, 14 figures