Low-energy incomplete fusion: A systematic study of entrance channel parameters

Research into heavy-ion fusion, a key area of modern nuclear reaction physics, has flourished in recent decades pursuant to developments in accelerator technology. The primary goal of studying heavy-ion reactions is to gain knowledge about the underlying processes and how they are affected by entrance channel parameters, such as beam energy, angular momentum and mass asymmetry. The fusion mechanism of non-[Formula: see text]-cluster projectiles, such [Formula: see text]N and [Formula: see text]F, has been studied in the low-energy zone. It has been challenging to analyze the contributing degrees of freedom in such reactions due to the absence of experimental data. The present study reports the measurement of residual cross-sections from the [Formula: see text]F induced reaction on [Formula: see text]Nb within the energy range of 3–6 MeV/A. The stack foil activation technique followed by offline [Formula: see text] spectroscopy was employed to measure the cross-sections of residues populated in the reaction. The experimental data were compared with theoretical predictions from statistical model code PACE4 to probe the underlying reaction dynamics. The imitation of xn and pxn channel data grossly by model code suggests the production of residues via the complete fusion (CF) mode, while the enhancement observation in [Formula: see text]-channel cross-sections hints at the signatures of incomplete fusion (ICF) in addition to the dominant CF. Thus, the ICF strength fraction ([Formula: see text]) was calculated. Moreover, the estimated incomplete fusion fraction has been used to study the effect of several entrance channel parameters on incomplete fusion reaction dynamics. The present analysis shows the presence of strong clustering in the [Formula: see text]F projectile as [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]N.