Reactions induced by the halo nucleus 6He at energies around the Coulomb barrier

The reaction 6He+64Zn was studied in order to investigate the effects of the projectile neutron-halo structure on the reaction mechanism at energies around the Coulomb barrier. Elastic scattering angular distributions, transfer/break-up angular distributions and fusion excitation functions have been measured. Due to the low recoil energy of the evaporation residues and the low intensity of the 6He beam, the fusion cross-section was measured by detecting off-line the atomic X-ray emission which follows the Electron Capture decay of the evaporation residues. For comparison the reaction 4He+64Zn was studied using the same technique. The data for the reaction 6He+64Zn show that the transfer and break-up mechanisms account for almost 80% of the total reaction cross-section, moreover we do not observe an enhancement of the fusion cross-section when compared with the 4He+64Zn reaction.