The strongly damped collisions of 120 MeV 20Ne with 27Al

Abstract The reactions of 120 MeV 20 Ne with 27 Al have been studied using detector telescopes. Energy distributions and angular distributions of the products of quasielastic, deep inelastic and fusion reactions were measured. The limiting angular momentum for evaporation residue formation was found to be 33.6±1.7 h . Products of atomic number≦12 are found to result predominantly from quasi-two-body breakup of the composite system with increased damping of the initial kinetic energy as the mass transfer and the angle of detectiion increase. The elongation of the symmetric scission configuration of a fissioning 47 V nucleus is derived from the kinetic energies obtained for completely damped collisions. The contribution to the fragment kinetic energy from rapid rotation of the fissioning system is found to be comparable to the kinetic energy from Coulomb repulsion. The evolution of molecule-like composite nuclei and the similarities between deep inelastic reactions of relatively light nuclei and those observed for much heavier projectiles are discussed.