Experimental study of the effect of projectile and target structure on breakup fusion reactions induced by ^14 N projectiles

An outstanding problem in the heavy-ion (HI)-induced nuclear reactions is understanding the role of incomplete fusion (ICF) and its dependence on various entrance channel parameters relatively at energies slightly above the Coulomb barrier. For this purpose, the excitation functions (EFs) of reaction residues populated in ^14 N+ ^51 V system have been measured at energies ≈ 3–6 MeV/nucleon. The stacked foil activation technique followed by an off-line γ -ray spectrometer with a high-resolution HPGe detector has been employed. The measured excitation functions are compared with the theoretical predictions, obtained from statistical model codes PACE4 and ALICE-91. The analysis of the present work suggests that the experimental excitation functions for xn and/or pxn channels are grossly reproduced by the theoretical predictions. However, for α -emitting-channels, the measured EFs are found to be underestimated by the statistical predictions which may be attributed to the breakup fusion of the projectile with the target nucleus. For a better understanding of ICF reaction dynamics, the percentage of ICF fraction has been deduced. The present study in light of the literature data provides insight into the dependence of ICF processes on the projectile structure. Further, some physical parameters such as mass asymmetry of interacting partners, Coulomb interaction between projectile and target ( Z_P Z_T ), and the target deformation parameter ( β _2 ) are also found liable for projectile breakup prior to fusion.