α clustering in the O18,16+13,12C fusion-evaporation reactions

Abstract

α clustering plays an important role in studying not only nuclear structures but also nuclear reactions of light nuclei. In this work, we study the O18,16+13,12C fusion-evaporation reactions at the energy near the Coulomb barrier using a modified statistical model with the α-cluster structures taken into consideration explicitly in the nuclear level densities. This modified statistical model reproduces successfully the experimentally measured α-emission cross sections, and thus provides a possible way to resolve the underestimation discrepancy of the α emission in the original statistical model. Moreover, the modified statistical model could also describe well the angular distributions of the evaporation residues and the energy spectra of the emitted α particles. Therefore, our work shows that α-cluster structures could play an important role in the fusion-evaporation reactions of light ions, and the modified statistical model is a reliable theoretical model for these physical processes.