On the slope anomaly in heavy-ion transfer reactions Original Research Article

We discuss a semiclassical model of transfer reactions in heavy-ion collisions, in which the nuclei are assumed to move along classical trajectories governed by the Coulomb and the real part of the optical potential. The model, originally proposed for the case of spherical nuclei, is here extended to deformed ones. It takes into account tunneling around the point of closest approach of the collision partners, and the effect of other channels is included as an absorption due to the imaginary part of the optical potential. The interplay between absorption and tunneling effects explains both the observed energy dependence of the transfer probabilities at large distances, and the so-called “slope anomaly” in neutron transfer reactions.