An improved semiclassical method for heavy-ion-induced nuclear reactions

Recent work shows that a semiclassical DWBA method for the analyses of heavy-ion-induced inelastic and transfer processes can be tremendously simplified by using various asymptotic expansions and path integrations along a linear trajectory around the classical turning point. Such a method yields results in fair agreement with quantum mechanical calculations, with discrepancies of 30-40% observed for Q-value well-matched reactions. In this paper, we show that this discrepancy can be substantially reduced by including the deflection effects due to the Coulomb and the real nuclear potentials in the expressions for the relative velocity of the heavy ions, and the distance of closest approach. In the analyses of the inelastic scattering 58Ni(40Ar, 40Ar)58Ni(2+) and the transfer reaction 58Ni(40Ar, 41K)57Co at an incident laboratory energy of 280 MeV, the semiclassical and the fully quantum mechanical formalisms agree to within 10%. (author)