Shape effects in deuteron stripping on spheroidal nuclei

Abstract

The geometrical effect of the spheroidal shape of strongly deformed nuclei on the angular distributions from deuteron stripping reactions is discussed. The usual boundary conditions are assumed, not on a Butler sphere of radius r 0, but rather on a corresponding spheroidal boundary. This gives rise to contributions to the reaction amplitude, additional to the “spherical” parts, which correspond to angular momenta L different in general from the orbital angular momentum l of the captured nucleon. They do not, however, violate the strong coupling model selection rule L ≧ |K f −K i |− 1 2 ; in particular L = 0 can only occur if |K f −K i | = 1 2 . These shape contributions are in general rather small, but must be considered when attempts are made to correlate experimental widths with the nuclear collective model and to detect small configuration mixing effects.