How multifragmentation happens in heavy ion collisions in still a matter od debate. Explanations reach from nucleation over self organization, spinodal decomposition to cold break-up and survival of initial correlations. For an overview see ref. (1). A key question is the time scale of the reaction. Slow processes like nucleation or self organization are hindered if the expansion of the whole system is too fast. Another issue is the relaxation time for thermal and chemical equilibrium which is important when statistical models are used to explain multifragmentation (2,3,4,5).
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