Time scale of the thermal multifragmentation in p plus Au collisions at 8.1 GeV

The relative angle correlation of intermediate mass fragments has been studied for p + Au collisions at 8.1 GeV. Strong suppression at the small angles is observed caused by IMF-IMF Coulomb repulsion. Experimental correlation function is compared to that obtained by the multibody Coulomb trajectory calculations with the various decay times tau of fragmenting system. The combined model, including the empirically modified intranuclear cascade followed by statistical multifragmentation, was used to generate starting conditions for these calculations. The model dependence of the results obtained has been carefully checked. The mean decay time of fragmenting system is found to be tau less than or equal to 70 fm/c. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.