New approach of fragment charge correlations in 129Xe+natSn central collisions Original Research Article

A previous analysis of the charge (Z) correlations in the ΔZ−〈Z〉 plane for 129Xe+natSn central collisions at 32 MeV/n has shown an enhancement in the production of equally sized fragments (low ΔZ) which was interpreted as an evidence for spinodal decomposition. However, the signal is weak and rises the question of the estimation of the uncorrelated yield. After a critical analysis of its robustness, we propose in this paper a new technique to build the uncorrelated yield in the charge correlation function. The application of this method to 129Xe+natSn central collision data at 32, 39, 45 and 50 MeV/n does not show any particular enhancement of the correlation function in any ΔZ bin.