Effect of Nuclear Deformability on Reaction Cross Sections

Abstract

We have calculated the effect of nuclear deformability on the cross section for interaction of heavy ions with uranium. Static calculations indicate that these effects should be large; dynamic calculations with liquid-drop parameters indicate that they should be smaller, but measurable with currently available heavy ions (argon incident on uranium). Dynamic calculations with parameters derived from spectroscopic measurements indicate that the effects should be quite small, in agreement with experiment. We have done both classical and quantum-mechanical calculations; the two methods give the same results. The quantum-mechanical calculations also give the probability of Coulomb excitation to the vibrational states of the target nucleus. We discuss the value of several approximations used to estimate total reaction cross sections.