Time scales of strongly energy damped and fast processes in light heavy-ion reactions were measured in order to investigate the dynamics involved in the collision. Particle-particle correlation functions at small relative momenta were measured to determine the time scale of sequential particle emission in highly excited light composite systems and the values obtained are compared to the lifetime of the compound nucleus determined by cross section fluctuations measurements. The results indicate that in the case of light nuclear systems, a drastic time scale compression is observed, independent of the inelasticity of the process, in contrast to the case of heavy systems for which the time difference between the fast and slow processes is at least 100-1000 times larger.Despite the systematic investigations of fusion reactions over the last two decades, many questions regarding the reaction dynamics still remain open. Moreover, the identification of the characteristics which act as signatures of the competing reaction mechanisms still remain uncertain [1][2][3][4]. It is accepted that the large-scale collective motion of nuclei, present in fully energy damped reactions, is associated with large nuclear dissipation. Detailed studies on binary decay of light nuclear systems [3,5] were recently carried out to characterize the time evolution E-mail address: suaide@dfn.if.usp.br (A.A.P. Suaide).of these processes which remains as one of the unresolved questions. It has been long established that in the case of collisions involving heavy nuclei (A CN > 100), a clear correlation exists between the inelasticity of the process, the degree of isotropy in the final state and also the duration of the process [1,2]. A clear distinction is observed between fast energy-damped processes (DIC or fast-fission with durations of τ DIC ∼ 10 −21 s) and the formation of thermodynamically equilibrated compound nuclei (CN) with lifetimes of the order of τ CN ∼ 10 −16 s [6] which are significantly larger than the transit time τ ∼ 10 −22 s [7]. It is also assumed that in these extreme cases, the equilibration of the shape degree of freedom is the last one 0370-2693/$ -see front matter 