Insight into the reaction dynamics of proton drip-line nuclear system 17F+58Ni at near-barrier energies

The mechanism of reactions with weakly-bound proton-rich nuclei at energies near the Coulomb barrier is a long-standing open question owing to the paucity of experimental data. In this study, a complete kinematics measurement was performed for the proton drip-line nucleus F-17 interacting with Ni-58 at four energies near the Coulomb barrier. Thanks to the powerful performance of the detector array, exhaustive information on the reaction channels, such as the differential cross sections for quasielastic scattering, exclusive and inclusive breakup, as well as for fusion-evaporation protons and alphas, was derived for the first time. The angular distributions of quasielastic scattering and exclusive breakup can be described reasonably well by the continuum-discretized coupled-channels calculations. The inclusive breakup was investigated using the three-body model proposed by Ichimura, Austern, and Vincent, and results indicate the non-elastic breakup is the dominant component. The total fusion cross sections were determined by the fusion-evaporation protons and alphas. Based on the measured exclusive breakup data, the analysis of the classical dynamical simulation code PLATYPUS demonstrates that the incomplete fusion plays a minor role. Moreover, compared with O-16+Ni-58, both the reaction and total fusion cross sections of F-17+Ni-58 exhibit an enhancement in the sub-barrier energy region, which mainly arises from couplings to the continuum states. This work indicates that the information of full reaction channels is crucially important to comprehensively understand the reaction mechanisms of weakly bound nuclear systems. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automated summary

This study provides comprehensive information on the reaction mechanisms of weakly bound nuclear systems by performing complete kinematics measurements, continuum-discretized coupled-channels calculations, and three-body model investigations for F-17 interacting with Ni-58 near the Coulomb barrier energies. Results show that non-elastic breakup is dominant, while incomplete fusion plays a minor role. Furthermore, the reaction and total fusion cross sections of F-17+Ni-58 exhibit enhancement in the sub-barrier energy region compared to O-16+Ni-58, mainly due to couplings to continuum states.