Fission and ternary cluster decay of hyper-deformed

Coincidences between two heavy fragments have been measured from the fission of 56Ni compound nuclei formed in the 32S + 24Mg reaction at E lab( ^32S ) = 165.4 MeV. A unique experimental set-up consisting of two large-area position-sensitive (x, y) gas detector telescopes has been used allowing the complete determination of the observed fragments and their momentum vectors. In addition to binary fission events with subsequent particle evaporation, narrow out-of-plane correlations are observed for two fragments emitted in purely binary events and in events with a missing charge consisting of 2α - and 3α -particles (12C). These events are interpreted as ternary cluster decay from 56Ni nuclei at high angular momenta through hyper-deformed shapes