A new coupling potential for the analysis of deformed light heavy-ion reactions

A number of serious problems has continued to plague the study of the O-16 + (28)si, C-12 + Mg-24 and C-12 + C-12 systems for the last 40 years. The explanation of anomalous large angle scattering data; the reproduction of the oscillatory structure near the Coulomb barrier; the out-of-phase problem between theoretical predictions and experimental data; the consistent description of angular distributions together with resonance and excitation functions data are just some of these problems. These are long standing problems that have persisted over the years and do represent a challenge calling for a consistent framework to resolve these difficulties within a unified approach. Traditional frameworks have failed to describe these phenomena within a single model and have so far only offered different approaches where these difficulties are investigated separately from one another. The present work offers a plausible framework where all these difficulties are answered. Not only it improves the simultaneous fits to the data of these diverse observables, achieving this within a unified approach for a number of nuclear systems over wide energy ranges, but it departs for its coupling potential from the standard formulation. This new feature could provide new insight in the dynamics of these reactions. It also leads to new predictions especially concerning resonance phenomena in these systems which could form the basis for some new experimental investigation. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.