Evidence for Thermal Equilibration in Multifragmentation Reactions Probed with Bremsstrahlung Photons

The production of nuclear bremsstrahlung photons (E{sub {gamma}}>30 MeV) has been studied in inclusive and exclusive measurements in four heavy-ion reactions at 60A MeV . The measured photon spectra, angular distributions, and multiplicities indicate that a significant fraction of the hard photons is emitted in secondary nucleon-nucleon collisions from a thermally equilibrated system. The observation of the thermal component in multifragment {sup 36}Ar+{sup 197}Au reactions suggests that the breakup of the thermalized source produced in this system occurs on a rather long time scale.