Experimental studies of quasi-fission reactions

A large number of recent experimental studies have shown that a substantial fraction of the total reaction cross section in heavy-ion reactions is found in fission-like processes, which do not result from the fission decay of a completely fused system. Following the suggestion of Swiatecki such processes, which represents a complete relaxation of the relative kinetic energy and a substantial amount of net mass transfer between the two fragments, are denoted quasi-fission reactions. They are distinct from compound fission reactions by bypassing the stage of a completely fused-system. This typically means that they are associated with short reaction times, which results in several measurable characteristics such as broken forward-backward symmetries, large anisotropies of the angular distributions and increased widths of the fragment mass distributions. The distinction between quasi-fission and deep inelastic reactions is less stringent and has the character of a gradual evolution from one reaction type to the other, as found also as quasi-elastic reaction evolves into deeply inelastic processes as a function of the total kinetic energy loss. In the present paper some of the experimental data characterizing quasi-fission reactions are reviewed and discussed. 22 refs., 6 figs