Distribution of excitation energy in the 505 MeVFe56+165Ho reaction

The projectile-like fragment excitation energy in the ${}_{}{}^{56}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Ho}$ reaction at 9 MeV/nucleon has been obtained by applying a light particle evaporation calculation to data obtained from coincidence measurements of projectile-like and target-like fragments. It is found that the excitation energy per nucleon is greater for the projectile-like fragment than for the target-like fragment at energy losses less than 200 MeV and that the excitation energy per nucleon is shifted increasingly toward the target-like fragment as a function of increasing energy loss. This shift is found to depend strongly upon the net amount and direction of mass exchange. The variance of the excitation energy about the mean value was also obtained with the result that this variation is approximately a constant fraction of the total excitation energy above an energy loss of 75 MeV.