Heavy-ion fusion cross sections

Abstract The absolute cross sections for heavy-ion induced reactions in the rare earth region are studied systematically as functions of projectile energy, charge and mass. Targets and projec-tiles are chosen so that the same final states are fed in erbium, holmium and dysprosium nueleides with mass numbers A = 159–162. As the low lying states in these final nucleides are well known, the cross sections for the various reaction channels can be determined from singles γ-ray spectra. By summing these cross sections, the heavy-ion fusion cross sections are determined, and compared to theoretical calculations based on the Bass model as well as to total reaction cross sections deduced from optical model fits to elastic scattering data.