Multidimensional energy barrier models

In hot-fusion reactions, the cross section for producing heavy-element nuclides is determined by the probability that the highly excited compound nucleus will avoid fission in the deexcitation process. Cold fusion near the reaction barrier is qualitatively different the formation of the compound nucleus comes about in two separate steps [105, 107]. The reacting nuclei come into contact, captured into a dinuclear configuration, which is separated from an equilibrated compound nucleus by a potential-energy barrier which is not reproduced by the one-dimensional Coulomb-barrier model [94, 95, 210, 219, 220]. This extra barrier diverts the trajectory of the reaction through multidimensional deformation space toward quasifission, making reseparation much more likely than complete fusion. 

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