Influence of heavy-ion transfer on fusion reactions

The influence of inelastic excitations on heavy-ion fusion is well established and can be quantitativly described by coupled-channels calculations. The influence of transfer channels, however, is still under debate. We have analyzed a large set of heavy-ion-induced fusion excitation functions involving nuclei with similar structures and show that there is a universal correlation between the shape (and enhancement) of the excitation function and the strength of the total neutron-transfer cross sections for systems ranging from light to heavy masses. © 2014 American Physical Society.