Direct reaction approach to heavy ion scattering and fusion at sub-and near-Coulomb barrier energies

A brief review is given of our recent simultaneous analyses of heavy ion scattering and fusion at sub- and near-Coulomb barrier energies. The analyses are based on the direct reaction approach to fusion and determine the fusion and direct reaction contributions to the imaginary part of the optical potential separately. Particular emphasis is placed on the determination of a fully dispersive optical potential. (author)