The slopes of sub-barrier heavy-ion fusion excitation functions shed light on the dynamics of quantum tunnelling

Abstract Quantum tunnelling plays a crucial role in heavy-ion fusion reactions at sub-barrier energies, especially in the context of nuclear physics and astrophysics. The nuclear structure of the colliding nuclei and nucleon transfer processes represent intrinsic degrees of freedom. They are coupled to the relative ion motion and, in general, increase the probability of tunnelling. The influence of couplings to nucleon transfer channels relatively to inelastic excitations, on heavy-ion fusion cross sections, is one of the still open problems in this field. We present a new analysis of several systems, based on the combined observation of the energy-weighted excitation functions $$E\sigma $$ E σ in relation to their first energy derivatives $$d(E\sigma )/dE$$ d ( E σ ) / d E . The relation between $$d(E\sigma )/dE$$ d ( E σ ) / d E and $$E\sigma $$ E σ removes the basic differences due to the varying Coulomb barrier when comparing different systems. We show that, depending on the nuclear structure and/or the presence of strong transfer channels, this representation reveals characteristic features below the barrier. The possible presence of cross section oscillations makes this analysis less clear for light- or medium-light systems.