physics pp. 495–504 Heavy-ion fusion at low energies

Abstract. 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 occuring 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 40Ca + 90;96Zr systems appear to confirm this result. For large