A study of the reactions occurring in 16O + 159Tb system: Measurement of excitation functions and recoil range distributions

In order to study complete and incomplete fusion in heavy ion reactions, the excitation functions for several residues produced in the system 16O + 159Tb have been measured in the energy range ≈70–95 MeV, employing activation technique. The measured excitation functions have been compared with those calculated using computer codes CASCADE, PACE2 and ALICE-91. Comparison of measured and theoretically calculated excitation functions has indicated significant contributions from incomplete fusion in some α-emission channels. In the present experiment, the recoil range distributions of several residues at ≈90 MeV incident beam energy have also been measured using recoil catcher technique and off-line gamma ray spectrometry. Analysis of the recoil range distributions has further confirmed the presence of contributions from incomplete fusion reactions. An attempt has been made to separate out the relative contributions of complete and incomplete fusion channels.