Nuclear neck-density determination at Fermi energy with CHIMERA detector

Binary collisions of either stable or radioactive heavy ions at Fermi energies allow to study the nuclear reaction mechanisms under dynamical conditions of non-equilibrium and the formation of transient pieces of nuclear matter of very short mean life times at sub-normal density. An important role in the evolutionary phase of the collision is played by the gradient of the nuclear density affecting the isospin asymmetry of the reaction products by typical transport phenomena such as the isospin diffusion and drift. Experimental determination of the value of the nuclear matter density in the early phase of the collision is a crucial step towards understanding the underlying mechanism responsible for the production of clusters. In this paper a method for evaluating the nuclear density in semi-peripheral collisions in the reaction $$^{124}Sn + ^{64}Ni$$ at 35 MeV/nucleon as studied with the CHIMERA multi-particle detector is described.