Properties of hot nuclei originating from collisions of light relativistic ions with heavy targets

Nuclear multifragmentation is the main channel of decay of hot nuclei at temperatures of 5 to 6 MeV. Investigation of this process permits experimentally determining the critical temperature for the liquid-gas nuclear phase transition. It was found that T _c = 17±2 MeV. Characteristic times of the process are measured by analyzing correlation functions for fragment pairs. The mean fragment-emission time was found to be 1 to 2 × 10^?22 s.