Breakup fusion in ¹⁴N+¹⁶⁹Tm system at low energies

A substantial contribution of incomplete fusion (ICF) has been observed at slightly above barrier energies, where complete fusion (CF) is supposed to be the sole contributor. The incomplete fusion (ICF) reaction may be considered to take place when the projectile breaks up near the vicinity of target nuclear field, into fragments, one of which fuses with the target nucleus forming an excited composite system which may eventually de-excite by particle and γ emission, while the other part of fragment moves into the forward direction without any interaction and acts as spectator. In 1984, Trautmann et al., observed that ICF is associated with peripheral collisions, while some studies suggest the involvement of lower angular momenta as well than the critical angular momentum (ℓ_c) for complete fusion (CF) to occur in these reactions. Nonetheless, the above mechanism is still not clearly understood, and is an active area of investigation. Further, the dependence of ICF processes on various entrance channel parameters viz., projectile type/energy, imparted input angular momentum (ℓ) to the system, α-break-up energy (Q_α), mass-asymmetry of the interaction partners, etc., has been studied but an unambiguous picture is yet to emerge