Excitation functions of the 20Ne+20Ne system

A differentially pumped windowless 20Ne gas target and a 20Ne beam produced with the ATLAS accelerator at Argonne National Laboratory were used to measure angle-averaged excitation functions for binary decay of 20Ne+20Ne into low-lying states of 20Ne+20Ne and 24Mg+16O, in the region of excitation energy in 40Ca from 51.4 to 58.2 MeV (20Ne beam energies from 61.8 to 75.4 MeV). The 20Ne+20Ne mass partition displays little correlated structure and there exists no evidence of intermediate width resonances in these channels with branching ratios comparable to those seen in the 24Mg+24Mg system. Angular distributions for the elastic channel are consistent with those obtained using optical-model calculations. The exictation functions for the low-lying channels in 24Mg+16O do contain some structures, with widths varying from 400 to 800 keV in the c.m. system