Incomplete fusion in 12C+160Gd collisions

The mechanism of the production of fast α-particles in ¹²C induced reactions was studied over a wide range of bombarding energies (7.5–16.7 MeV/A) by measuring α-γ coincidences. Absolute cross sections for ${}^{160}\text{Gd}\text{(}{}^{12}\text{C}\text{, αx}\text{n}\text{)}{}^{\mathrm{168?x}}\text{Er and}{}^{160}\text{Gd}\text{(}{}^{12}\text{C}\text{, 2αx}\text{n}\text{)}{}^{\mathrm{164?x}}\text{Dy}$ reactions, as well as inclusive α-particle production cross sections, have been determined. Depending on the bombarding energy, a fraction of 0.2–0.4 of the singles α-particles can be explained as resulting from incomplete fusion reactions (¹²C, α) and (¹²C, 2α) which correspond to a capture of “⁸Be” and “⁴He”, respectively. The remaining fragments of the projectile have, on the average, the beam-velocity energies and their angular distributions are forward peaked. Distributions of side-feeding to the yrast bands in the target-residue nuclei indicate that low partial waves are strongly hindered in the incomplete fusion reactions. The energy dependence of the cross sections for (¹²C, α) and (¹²C, 2α) incomplete fusion as well as for (¹²C, 3α) projectile breakup is given. A generalized concept of critical angular momentum which explains a competition between complete fusion, incomplete fusion and breakup reactions is proposed.