Quasiprojectile breakup and isospin equilibration at Fermi energies: Potential indication of longer projectile-target contact times

An investigation of the quasiprojectile breakup channel in semiperipheral and peripheral collisions of Ni58,64+Ni58,64 at 32 and 52 MeV/nucleon is presented. Data have been acquired in the first experimental campaign of the INDRA-FAZIA apparatus in GANIL. The effect of isospin diffusion between projectile and target in the two asymmetric reactions has been highlighted by means of the isospin transport ratio technique, exploiting the neutron-to-proton ratio of the quasiprojectile reconstructed from the two breakup fragments. We found evidence that, for the same reaction centrality, a higher degree of relaxation of the initial isospin imbalance is achieved in the breakup channel with respect to the more populated binary output, possibly indicating the indirect selection of specific dynamical features. We have proposed an interpretation based on different average projectile-target contact times related to the two exit channels under investigation, with a longer interaction for the breakup channel. The time information has been extracted from antisymmetrized molecular dynamics simulations of the studied systems coupled to Gemini++: the model calculations support the hypothesis hereby presented.