Many-body treatment of subbarrier fusion reactions

The subbarrier fusion of heavy-ions at energies around the Coulomb barrier is studied by using semiclassical mean-field theory. The paths connecting entrance and exit subbarrier fusion reaction channels are found by incorporating the Wick transformation into the mean-field kinetic equation. The polarization and deformation of nuclei is shown to lower the barrier height. It is demonstrated that preequilibrium nucleon exchange in classically forbidden region gives rise to the nonlocal effects lowering the effective barrier further at small relative distance. (author)