The efficacy of isotope thermometry: examining in the S-matrix approach

Isotope thermometry, widely used to measure the temperature of a hot nuclear system formed in energetic nuclear collisions, is examined in the light of S-matrix approach to the nuclear equation of state of disassembled nuclear matter. Scattering between produced light fragment pairs, hitherto neglected, is seen to have an important bearing on the extraction of system temperature and volume at freeze-out from isotope thermometry. Taking due care of the scattering effects and decay of the primary fragments, a more reliable way to extract the nuclear thermodynamic parameters is suggested by exploiting least-squares fit to the observed fragment multiplicities.