Trends of Total Reaction Cross-sections for Heavy-ion Collisions in the Intermediate Energy-range

Direct measurements of total reaction cross sections (${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{R}$) have been performed in the energy range of 10\char21{}300 MeV/nucleon for heavy ion collisions. A decrease of ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{R}$ with increasing energy was observed for a wide range of masses of the colliding systems. The data suggest that ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{R}$ reaches a minimum located around 300 MeV/nucleon independently of the projectile target combination. A dependence of ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{R}$ on mass asymmetry of the system is also demonstrated. Trends of ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{R}$ in this energy range are well reproduced by the predictions of a simple microscopic model based on individual nucleon-nucleon collisions. Our data have been employed in this framework to derive a new semi- empirical parametrization of ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{R}$. Most of the experimental results in the intermediate and high energy range have been reproduced by this parametrization using a single energy-dependent parameter.