Microscopic analysis of fusion hindrance in heavy systems

Abstract: Background: Heavy-ion fusion reactions involving heavy nuclei at energies around the Coulomb barrier exhibit fusion hindrance, where the probability of compound nucleus formation is strongly hindered compared with that in light- and medium-mass systems. The origin of this fusion hindrance has not been well understood from a microscopic point of view. Purpose: Analyze the fusion dynamics in heavy systems by a microscopic reaction model and understand the origin of the fusion hindrance. Method: We employ the time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) theory. We extract nucleus--nucleus potential and energy dissipation by the method combining TDHF dynamics of the entrance channel of fusion reactions with one-dimensional Newton equation including a dissipation term. Then, we analyze the origin of the fusion hindrance using the properties of the extracted potential and energy dissipation. Results: Extracted potentials show monotonic increase as the relative distance of two nuclei decreases, which induces the disappearance of an ordinary barrier structure of the potential. This is different from those in light- and medium-mass systems and from density-constraint TDHF calculations. Extracted friction coefficients show sizable energy dependence and universal value of their magnitude, which are rather similar to those in light- and medium-mass systems. Using these properties, we analyze the origin of the fusion hindrance and find that contribution of the increase in potential to the extra-push energy is larger than that of the accumulated dissipation energy in most systems studied in this article. Conclusions: By the analysis of the origin of the fusion hindrance, we conclude that, as the system becomes heavier, the dynamical increase in potential at small relative distances plays a more important role than the dissipation during the fusion reaction for understanding the origin of the fusion hindrance.