Statistical simulation of complete events in energetic nuclear collisions

A statistical model is developed for the generation of complete multifragment events in medium-energy nuclear collisions. Based on simple geometrical considerations, the collision system is divided into a few (participant/spectator) sources that disassemble independently. The sufficiently excited sources quickly explode into pions, nucleons, and composite, possibly particle unstable, nuclei. The different final states compete according to their microcanonical weight. The less excited sources, and the unstable explosion products, deexcite by sequential light-particle emission. The model has been implemented as a Monte Carlo computer code that is sufficiently efficient to permit generation of large event samples. The analysis of such multifragment events is addressed and some illustrative applications are discussed.