Abstract
We overview the current status of theoretical approaches for heavy-ion fusion reactions at subbarrier energies. We particularly discuss theoretical challenges in the coupled-channels approach, that include i) a description of deep subbarrier hindrance of fusion cross sections, ii) the role of nuclear dissipation, iii) fusion of unstable nuclei, and iv) an interplay between fusion and multi-nucleon transfer processes. We also present results of a semi-microscopic approach to heavy-ion fusion reactions, that combines the coupled-channels approach with state-of-the-art microscopic nuclear structure calculations.
Highlights
Fusion is a reaction to form a compound nucleus
As an example of the semi-microscopic approaches to heavy-ion subbarrier fusion reactions, we present in this subsection the approach which combines the coupledchannels calculations with the multi-reference covariant density functional theory (MR-CDFT) for nuclear collective excitations [41]
Heavy-ion subbarrier fusion reactions show a strong interplay between nuclear reaction and nuclear structure, and contain a variety of rich physics, such as coupling assisted tunneling and energy dissipation
Summary
Fusion is a reaction to form a compound nucleus. It plays an important role in several phenomena in nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics, such as synthesis of superheavy elements and the energy production in stars. In the potential between two colliding nuclei, the so called Coulomb barrier is formed by a strong cancellation between the Coulomb and a nuclear interactions This Coulomb barrier has to be overcome in order for fusion to take place, and the height of the Coulomb barrier defines the energy scale of the reaction. This strong interplay has been well realized in a large enhancement of fusion cross sections at subbarrier energies as compared to a prediction of a one-dimensional potential model [1,2,3,4,5] This is in marked contrast to high energy nuclear reactions, in which the couplings play a much less important role and the reaction dynamics is much simpler. We shall first overview the present status of this approach and discuss several remaining theoretical challenges
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