Partial breakdown of the evaporation model and possible preequilibrium α-particle emission in heavy-ion fusion reactions

Relative cross sections for residual nuclei following fusion reactions were measured by γ-ray spectroscopy in the reactions ⁵²Cr+ ¹²C at 56.00 MeV and ⁴⁸Ti+ ¹⁶O at 57.74 MeV, in which the common “compound nucleus” ⁶⁴Zn was excited at the same energies and the relative distributions of the entrance spins were nearly identical. It is shown that ratios of the measured cross sections in both entrance channels can be precisely determined experimentally and are insensitive to small changes of the parameters in calculations based on the evaporation model. Using these particular quantities, we have shown that the evaporation process is not the sole mechanism producing the observed residues, especially those resulting from α-particle emission. The assumption of preequilibrium α-particle emission at high channel spins is shown to reproduce the present data fairly well.