Towards the fusion of weakly bound projectiles with heavy targets with proximity based potentials

Department of Physics, Panjab University, Chandigarh - 160 014, India

^a e-mail: rajkumari80pu@gmail.com

Published online: 1 April 2014

Abstract

Theoretical calculations using proximity based potentials are performed to predict the fusion cross sections of the reactions of weakly bound projectiles especially halo nuclei with ²⁰⁹Bi target. Both neutron halo as well as proton halo projectiles are taken in the present analysis. In particular, we study the role of extended nuclear radii of these weakly bound nuclei on the fusion cross sections. The inability of ⁸B+⁵⁸Ni reaction to follow the systematics at above barrier energies motivates us to investigate the trend for the reactions of those weakly bound nuclei for which experiments are not yet performed. Our results indicate that extended radii of these weakly bound nuclei significantly affect fusion barrier heights as well as fusion probabilities throughout the energy range. We also study the fusion probabilities of a few reactions involving tightly bound projectiles.