Multi-fragment decays of 129 Xe, 197 Au, and 238 U projectiles in collisions with Be, C, Al, Cu, In, Au, and U targets at energies between E/A = 400 MeV and 1000 MeV have been studied with the ALADIN forward-spectrometer at SIS. By adding an array of 84 SiCsI(Tl) telescopes the solid-angle coverage of the setup was extended to θ lab = 16 • . This permitted the complete detection of fragments from the projectile-spectator source.The dominant feature of the systematic set of data is the Z bound universality that is obeyed by the fragment multiplicities and correlations. These observables are invariant with respect to the entrance channel if plotted as a function of Z bound , where Z bound is the sum of the atomic numbers Z i of all projectile fragments with Z i ≥ 2. No significant dependence on the bombarding energy nor on the target mass is observed. The dependence of the fragment multiplicity on the projectile mass follows a linear scaling law.The reasons for and the limits of the observed universality of spectator fragmentation are explored within the realm of the available data and with model studies. It is found that the universal properties should persist up to much higher bombarding energies than explored in this work and that they are consistent with universal features exhibited by the intranuclear cascade and statistical multifragmentation models.

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Multifragmentation has been measured for I97 Au+ 197 Au collisions at El A =100, 250, and 400 MeV. The mean fragment multiplicity increases monotonically with the charged particle multiplicity at El A =100 MeV, but decreases for central collisions with incident energy, consistent with the onset of nuclear vaporization. Molecular dynamics calculations follow some trends but underpredict the observed fragment multiplicities. Including the statistical decay of excited residues improves the agreement for peripheral collisions but worsens it for central collisions. PACS numbers: 25.70.Pq, 25.70.GhHighly excited systems can be formed during energetic nucleus-nucleus collisions, which expand due to thermal pressure [1,2] or via dynamical compression-decompression cycles [3]. For systems which expand to low densities where bulk nuclear matter is thermodynamically unstable, the growth of density fluctuations may favor multifragment disintegrations [4][5][6], and such disintegrations have been observed [7][8][9][10][11][12]. While definitive interpretations are premature, calculations predict that the onset of multifragmentation and the transition from multifragmentation into vaporization may be sensitive to the low density equation of state [2,13] and the liquid-gas phase transition of nuclear matter [14][15][16][17].The incident energy dependence of multifragmentation has been recently explored for 36 Ar+ 197 Au collisions between £7. 4=35 and 110 MeV [7]. These investigations reveal large fragment multiplicities for central collisions, which increase monotonically with incident energy. Over a broader range of incident energies, however, calculations predict a maximum in the fragment multiplicity for central collisions at El A ~ 100 MeV [18], and decreasing multiplicities thereafter, consistent with the onset of nuclear vaporization [4,5].

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