Direct Experimental Evidence of Nonequilibrium Energy Sharing in Dissipative Collisions

Primary and secondary masses of heavy reaction products have been deduced from kinematics and energy{endash}time-of-flight measurements, respectively, for the direct and reverse collisions of {sup 100}Mo with {sup 120}Sn at 14.1AMeV. Direct experimental evidence of the correlation of energy sharing with net mass transfer and model-independent results on the evolution of the average excitation from equal-energy to equal-temperature partition are presented. {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}