Effect ofBe8decay on nuclear temperature measurements

We have investigated the effect of ${}_{}{}^8{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Be}$ decay on nuclear temperature measurements in the ${}_{}{}^{14}{}_{}{}^{}$N+Ag reaction at E/A=35 MeV. We have determined what percentage of the apparent ${}_{}{}^7{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Li}$ spectrum is due to the identification of the coincident alpha particles from ${}_{}{}^8{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Be}$ decay as ${}_{}{}^7{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Li}$. This information, coupled with previously published temperature measurements, produces agreement between temperatures obtained from ${}_{}{}^7{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Li}$ excited state populations and those obtained from ${}_{}{}^7{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Be}$ excited state populations. Additionally, we measured the production of the excited states of ${}_{}{}^7{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Li}$ and ${}_{}{}^7{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Be}$ nuclei emitted from the same reaction at beam energies of E/A=20 MeV and E/A=25 MeV. The temperatures extracted from these excited state populations are consistent with one another when corrected for the ${}_{}{}^8{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Be}$ contamination of the ${}_{}{}^7{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Li}$ spectra.