Decoherence in nuclear collisions: Towards a new understanding of near Coulomb barrier nuclear reactions

To understand the underlying physical processes that might lead to loss of quantum coherence, high precision quasi-elastic excitation functions at sub-barrier energies were measured. Results show transfer events to high excitation energies, which may be impossible to model in a coherent picture. This points to the need to explicitly include quantum decoherence in nuclear reaction models and ultimately to a new understanding of near Coulomb barrier nuclear reactions