Investigation of reaction and α production cross sections with 9Be projectile

In order to investigate the contribution of α production in the reaction cross sections, measurements of elastic scattering and inclusive α particle angular distributions have been carried out with the ⁹Be projectile on ⁸⁹Y, ¹²⁴Sn, ¹⁵⁹Tb, ¹⁹⁸Pt, and ²⁰⁹Bi targets over a wide angular range at energies near the Coulomb barrier. The measured elastic scattering angular distributions were fitted with optical model calculations, and reaction cross sections were extracted. The same data were also analyzed using both global optical model potentials (Global OMP) and microscopic São Paulo potentials (SPP), to obtain the reaction cross sections. The data available in the literature for ⁹Be projectile includes the elastic scattering angular distributions, α production cross sections, and complete fusion cross sections on these and other targets at several energies are also utilized for comparative studies. The reaction cross section extracted from the three potentials (Best Fit, Global OMP and SPP) are in reasonable agreement for all the targets except for the energies below the barrier where the results from SPP deviate by 30-50%. Inclusive α particle production cross sections were also extracted by integrating the α particle angular distributions. The present data and data available from literature of reaction and α-particle production cross sections were utilized to make systematic studies. Systematics of reaction and α-particle production cross sections revealed their universal behavior. The ratio of complete fusion (CF), inclusive α cross sections, and their sum (CF+α) to reaction cross sections show that at sub-barrier energies inclusive α dominates and above barrier CF dominates, and cumulative of these two processes almost explains the reaction cross section at all energies over a wide range of target mass. A comparative study of α production with other weakly bound projectiles is also performed and a clear distinction between projectile types is observed, which is found to correlate well with α separation energies of the projectiles.