We use the tools of hybrid intranuclear-cascade/nuclear-deexcitation models to evaluate the sensitivity of several physical observables to the inclusion of a multifragmentation stage in the deexcitation chain and assess the need for a multifragmentation model in the quantitative description of $p$ + ${}^{\text{5}6}$Fe and $p$ + ${}^{\text{1}36}$Xe reactions at 1-GeV incident energy. We seek clear signatures of multifragmentation by comparing different state-of-the-art deexcitation models coupled with intranuclear-cascade models and by focusing on discriminating observables such as correlations and fragment longitudinal-velocity distributions. None of the considered observables can be unambiguously interpreted as a multifragmentation footprint. The experimental data are best described as originating from sequential binary decays. However, no deexcitation model can reproduce the experimental longitudinal-velocity distributions from 1-GeV $p$ + ${}^{\text{1}36}$Xe.

• Received 28 October 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.84.064615