Clues to the shapes of very hot nuclei: Calculated patterns for evaporative emission from deformed nuclei

Evaporation-like emission of light particles (n, H, He, . . .) has been observed for many nuclear reactions that populate composite nuclei with temperatures of up to \ensuremath{\approxeq}5 MeV and spins as high as \ensuremath{\approxeq}150\ensuremath{\Elzxh}. The measured average energies for the light charged particles are often significantly lower than calculations for evaporation from spherical nuclei. Detailed calculations have not been reported for the role of deformation in evaporative emission patterns, and thus the interpretation of such data has been severely limited. In this paper we describe a method for making evaporation calculations for deformed nuclei, and we present results for several systems with temperatures of 2--5 MeV. The trends of the calculated results are compared to those for spherical emitters in order to get a feeling for those effects peculiar to the deformations. The patterns of calculated spectra and angular distributions encourage the notion that such studies can give valuable clues to the shapes of these very hot nuclei.