Largest fragment as an order parameter in thermal multifragmentation

The characteristics and behavior of the largest fragments in multifragmentation events originating from the interactions between light-ion projectile and heavy target at GeV energies were studied. It is supposed that the thermal multifragmentation component prevails in such interactions. The CR-39 plastic track detector was used and our experimental setup enabled the event-by-event analysis. The dependence of ZmaxZmax on atomic number of target and excitation energy was studied. The bimodality in charge asymmetry was also investigated. Our results show that ZmaxZmax may be used as a relevant order parameter in thermal multifragmentation.