6Li and 6He elastic scattering from 12C and the effect of direct reaction couplings

Similarities in the 6Li and 6He elastic scattering from 12C at about 35 MeV/nucleon are manifested in the ability of an optical model potential that differs only in having a weaker imaginary strength for 6He than for 6Li to describe both data sets equally well. However, the weaker absorption seen in the 6He+12C data is counter to expectations of the effect of coupling to breakup channels, confirmed by continuum discretized coupled channels calculations. Coupled reaction channels calculations including couplings to the strongest transfer channels are also unable to account for this phenomenon