Alignment and misalignment of fragment spins in 255 MeV Ar+Bi deep inelastic reactions

Angular distribution of sequential fission fragment of the heavy reaction product in coincidence with the light reaction product in the deep inelastic collision of 255 MeV ${}_{}{}^{40}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Ar}$ by ${}_{}{}^{209}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Bi}$ has been measured. For the first time, an important increase of the out-of-plane angular distribution width is observed as a function of the in-plane angle. The spins extracted from our data show clearly that the rigid rotation limit of the two nuclei is reached. The spin misalignment is preferentially located in a plane perpendicular to the heavy recoil lab direction.