Heavy-ion fusion at low energies

Through precision measurements of fusion cross sections at energies close to the Coulomb barrier and through the application of the method of “experimental barrier distributions” which these permit, many recent advances have been made in our understanding of the dynamical processes occurring during a heavy-ion collision. It is now clear that the target and projectile reach one another in superpositions of states which correspond to different orientations for rotational nuclei or to different induced deformations for vibrational nuclei. The creation of a neck of neutron matter has also long been postulated and by studying the isotopic dependence of the fusion reaction, some recent results in the ¹⁰Ca+^90,96Zr systems appear to confirm this result. For large Z ₁ Z ₂ a type of extra-push effect can arise from the same inelastic entrance-channel effects which enhance the fusion of lighter systems, though this will be absent in cases where the enhancement arises from neutron transfers. The existence of different barriers will of course influence all other reaction channels. Fusion simply allows one to visualise the barriers most easily, since for this process, the total cross section is an incoherent sum of the contributions from all relevant eigenchannels. Some effects in other channels have already been observed. Other possible effects will be discussed. These include; the exploitation of the lowest-energy barrier to produce exotic evaporation residues and strongly deformed high-spin states at low excitation energy.