The influence of the nuclear matter incompressibility on heavy-ion fusion reactions at near- and above-barrier energies

Abstract

Based on simulating the saturation property of cold nuclear matter for complete fusion channel of two approaching nuclei, we systematically investigate the role of nuclear incompressibility in the nucleus-nucleus potential and fusion-evaporation cross section of 69 medium-heavy and heavy mass systems with 208≤Z1Z2≤1520. Our observations based on the uncoupled single-barrier potential model and the M3Y double-folding potential which is corrected with a repulsive core term reveal that the incompressibility of cold nuclear matter can be responsible for the discrepancy between the measured and calculated values of the fusion cross sections at energies around and above the Coulomb barrier. In other words, one can find that the high energy fusion cross sections can not be reproduced using the standard form of the M3Y-DF potential model without considering the repulsive core effects. We show that the strength of the repulsive contact term and also the incompressibility of the compound nuclei exhibit systematic behaviors with respect to the atomic and mass numbers of reacting nuclei. It is shown that the hardness level of nuclear matter reduces when one passes from lighter to heavier systems.