Reply to ''Comment on 'Unexpected large deformations in 60Ni* nuclei produced in the reaction 120 MeV 30Si+30Si' ''

In a Comment on our analysis of measured 4He energy spectra for the composite system 60Ni (E*=75 MeV and Jmax=38ℎ), Nicolis and Sarantites have reported statistical-model calculations which reproduce most of the features of the data assuming spherically symmetric parameters. This result is in disagreement with the strong deformations we have found for this compound nucleus. We show in this reply that the different conclusions concerning the magnitude of reduction in the emission barrier arise essentially from the choice of the transmission coefficients in statistical-model calculations. In particular, optical-model transmission coefficients used by Nicolis and Sarantites provide 4He energy spectra significantly softer than those obtained using transmission coefficients derived from fusion systematics adopted in our calculations. Nevertheless, even using the optical-model transmission coefficients a significant sub-barrier disagreement between data and calculations still exists, indicating important emitter deformations. A comparison between the two sets of proton transmission coefficients reveals strong differences whose influence on 4He energy spectra is discussed