Fusion of 40Ca+124Sn around the Coulomb barrier

Abstract Fusion-evaporation cross sections of 40 Ca + 124 Sn have been measured with good precision and the barrier distribution extracted, following a complementary experiment on multinucleon transfer on the same system. The completeness of the data allows to constrain the fusion calculations concerning the effect of transfer coupling. The measured cross sections are strongly enhanced below the barrier compared to the one-dimensional barrier penetration estimate and the “barrier distribution” is broad with no clear peak structure. Those features, together with transfer Q-values and cross sections make this system very similar to 40 Ca + 96 Zr where there were also hints of significant transfer effects. Simplified coupled-channel calculations fail to reproduce the low energy tail of the data, although the barrier distribution is qualitatively reproduced. At a few energies, also the fusion of 40 Ca + 116 Sn has been measured and found to be very similar to the 124 Sn case.