Heavy-ion reactions near and below the coulomb barrier

The experimental knowledge of heavy-ion reactions near the Coulomb barrier has been improved considerably in the past decade. Cross sections and angular distributions for the most dominant reaction channels have been measured for several systems and one has observed large enhancements of subbarrier fusion cross sections compared to one-dimensional barrier penetration models. It has been an important issue to try to understand the interplay between the different reaction channels and, in particular, their influence on fusion and elastic scattering. The present understanding of this interplay is reviewed, and coupled-channels calculations that attempt to give a realistic description of the most dominant reaction channels are discussed