ORIENTATION AND DEFORMATION DEPENDENCE OF THE REACTION CROSS-SECTION FOR A DEFORMED TARGET NUCLEUS

Abstract

The optical limit approximation to Glauber theory was used to calculate the reaction cross-section, σR, for a deformed target nucleus. A method is presented to include both density dependence of NN reaction cross-section and higher order deformations of the target nucleus. We studied orientation, energy and deformation dependence of σR for C 12– N 17 and C 12– U 238 interacting pairs. We found that the orientation dependence of σR for the heavy target U 238 depends on the value and sign of hexadecapole deformation and it is more than 2.2 times compared to the light deformed target nucleus N 17. The presence of hexadecapole deformation does not affect the value of σR averaged over all orientation of the target nucleus. A geometrical model was proposed to account for the orientation dependence of σR. We found that the error in this model is less than 10%.