Role of non-collective excitations in heavy-ion fusion reactions and quasi-elastic scattering around the Coulomb barrier

TL;DR

This study investigates the impact of non-collective excitations on heavy-ion fusion and quasi-elastic scattering around the Coulomb barrier, revealing that including these states improves but does not fully resolve discrepancies with experimental data.

Contribution

The paper introduces a comprehensive coupled-channels approach incorporating known non-collective states, advancing understanding of fusion and scattering anomalies in heavy-ion reactions.

Findings

Including non-collective states modifies the barrier distribution.

Discrepancies with experimental data persist despite the inclusion.

Large-angle quasi-elastic scattering becomes more significant at higher energies.

Abstract

Despite the supposed simplicity of double-closed shell nuclei, conventional coupled-channels calculations, that include all of the known collective states of the target and projectile, give a poor fit to the fusion cross section for the $^{16}$O + $^{208}$Pb system. The discrepancies are highlighted through the experimental barrier distribution and logarithmic derivative, that are both well defined by the precise experimental fusion data available. In order to broaden our search for possible causes for this anomaly, we revisit this system and include in our calculations a large number of non-collective states of the target, whose spin, parity, excitation energy and deformation paramter are known from high-precision proton inelastic-scattering measurements. Although the new coupled-channels calculations modify the barrier distribution, the disagreemnt with experiment remains both for fusion and for quasi-elastic (QE) scattering. We find that the Q-value distributions for large-angle QE scattering become rapidly more important as the incident energy increases, reflecting the trend of the experimental data. The mass-number dependence of the non-collective excitations is discussed.