PROBING THE STATISTICAL DECAY AND α-CLUSTERING EFFECTS IN 12C+12C AND 14N+10B REACTIONS

Abstract. An experimental campaign has been undertaken at Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro (LNL INFN), Italy, in order to progress in our understanding of the statistical properties of light nuclei at excitation energies above particle emission threshold, by mea-suring exclusive data from fusion-evaporation reactions. On the experimental side, a first reaction: 12C+12C at 95 MeV beam energy has been measured, using the GARFIELD + Ring Counter (RCo) apparatuses. Fusion-evaporation events have been exclusively se-lected out of the entire data set. The comparison to a dedicated Hauser-Feshbach calcu-lation allows us to give constraints on the nuclear level density at high excitation energy for light systems ranging from C up to Mg. Out-of-equilibrium α emission has been evidenced and attributed both to an entrance channel effect (favoured by the cluster na-ture of reaction partners), and, in more dissipative events, to the persistence of cluster correlations well above the 24Mg threshold for 6 α’s decay. In order to study the same 24Mg compound nucleus at similar excitation energy with respect to this first reaction a new measurement, 14N + 10B at 5.7 A.MeV, was performed at LNL laboratories with the same experimental setup. The comparison between the two systems would allow us t