Formation and decay cross sections of 66As⁎ formed in an exotic proton-halo 8B induced reaction

In reference to experimental data on the fusion of a proton-halo B8 projectile with a Ni58 target, a systematic decay study of As⁎66 is carried out in the framework of the dynamical cluster-decay model (DCM). The calculations suggest that the fusion excitation function of As⁎66 consists of light particles (LPs) as the most dominant contributors, followed by intermediate mass fragments (IMFs) and fission fragments. A description of deformation effects is also provided by considering spherical and deformed choice of fragmentation up to quadrupole (β2iβ2i) and hexadecapole (β2i–β4iβ2i–β4i) deformation. The DCM-based excitation functions agree well with the observed experimental cross sections for all three choices of fragmentation. The ℓ-summed Wong model is also employed to analyze the fusion cross section, which seems to work well, except for the minimum energy that lies below the barrier. Evidently, at below-barrier energy, the Wong model requires further barrier modification, which in the DCM, is accounted by its inbuilt property of barrier modification. Predictions of cross sections at higher extrapolated energies have also been done using both the DCM and ℓ-summed Wong model.