Investigating fusion dynamics at high angular momentum via fission cross sections

A quantitative understanding of fusion dynamics at high angular momentum is attempted employing experimental fission cross sections as a probe and carrying out a simultaneous description of the fusion and fission cross sections at above barrier energies. For this, experimental fission fragment angular distributions for three systems: 16O+148Sm, 28Si+136Ba and 40Ca+124Sn, all forming the same compound nucleus 164Yb at similar excitation energies, have been measured at four beam energies above their respective capture barriers. A simultaneous description of the angle integrated fission cross sections and evaporation residue/fusion cross sections available in literature for the systems is carried out using coupled-channels and statistical model calculations. Fission cross sections, which are most sensitive to the changes in angular momentum, provide very stringent constraints for model calculations thus indicating the need of precision evaporation residue as well as fission cross sections in such studies. A large diffuseness (ao>0.65 fm) of the nuclear potential gives the best reproduction of the experimental data. In addition, different coupling schemes give very different angular momentum distributions, which, in turn, give very different fission cross section predictions. Both these observations hint at the explanation that depending on energy dissipation of the interacting nuclei occurring inside or outside the fusion pocket, very different fission cross sections can result due to heavily altered angular momentum and thus justifies the sensitivity of fission cross sections used as probes in the present work