Pre-equilibrium emission to study clustering in nuclei

Clustering structural properties in medium-mass systems have been investigated studying the competition between the evaporation and pre-equilibrium particle emission in central collisions. At variance with light nuclei, in the case of heavier nuclei there are no experimental evidences of such structure effects, since the determination of pre-formed clusters within nuclear matter is less obvious. The two systems ¹⁶O + ⁶⁵Cu and ¹⁹F + ⁶²Ni, leading to the same compound system ⁸¹Rb^∗, have been studied at the same beam velocity (16 AMeV). The experiments have been performed using the GARFIELD + RCo multi-detection system at the Legnaro National Laboratories. Recent results of the data analysis and of the comparison of the experimental data with different statistical and dynamical model calculations are reported in this contribution.