Evidence of projectile polarisation effects on the reaction 208Pb(17O, 16O)209Pb

Coupled reaction channels calculations (CRC) of the reactions ²⁰⁸Pb(¹⁷O, ¹⁶O)²⁰⁹Pb leading to different states of ²⁰⁹Pb are compared with DWBA predictions at projectile energies of 78, 86 and 102 MeV. The calculations exhibit strong effects of multistep processes on Q-value and angular-momentum-mismatched transfer reactions. It is shown that the contribution to the transfer through the inelastic excitation of ¹⁷O contains a major part of the multistep effect. A simple three-channel model comprising the elastic, inelastic and transfer channels is constructed which simulates the CRC effects on the transfer cross sections. The polarization effects of the eliminated channels give rise to effective potentials which are mainly imaginary.