Unexpected behavior of heavy-ion fusion cross sections at extreme sub-barrier energies

Phys Rev Lett. 2002 Jul 29;89(5):052701. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.052701. Epub 2002 Jul 11.

Abstract

The excitation function for fusion evaporation in the (60)Ni+ (89)Y system was measured over a range in cross section covering 6 orders of magnitude. The cross section exhibits an abrupt decrease at extreme sub-barrier energies. This behavior, which is also present in a few other systems found in the literature, cannot be reproduced with present models, including those based on a coupled-channels approach. Possible causes are discussed, including a dependence on the intrinsic structure of the participants.