Systematics of the (d, 6Li) reaction and α clustering in heavy nuclei

Data for the α-particle pickup reaction (d, ⁶Li) have been obtained at 35-MeV bombarding energy for even-even nuclei from ¹²C to ²³⁸U. The cross sections for the transitions to the ground states decrease approximately as $\frac{1}{{A_t}^3}$ where $A_t$ is the target mass. α-particle transfer probabilities have been extracted from the data and are found to be substantially enhanced in heavy nuclei away from shell closures, particularly for deformed nuclei near A≈150. α-particle correlations appear to be related to two-nucleon pairing effects.