Jacques Raynal: memories of a physicist

Abstract

This text is dedicated to the memory of Jacques Raynal. I recall some of the interactions I had with Jacques from 1975 up until his death. I first met Jacques as a young student at Saclay in the mid 1970s and from then on we collaborated frequently. Jacques initiated me into elastic and inelastic scattering calculations in the coupled channels formalism. Within this formalism we calculated the excitation of Giant Resonance by light- or heavy-ion projectiles. We collaborated on the Coulomb corrections implemented in ECIS and later we tested numerically the Incoming Wave Boundary Condition, which is an important assumption when calculating sub-Coulomb fusion cross sections. He was among the first to understand the origin of what we would call the 3- excitation hindrance and suggest solutions.