Grazing reactions in collisions between heavy nuclei

A microscopic model of grazing collisions based on well-known form factors for single-particle transfer gives a comprehensive description of the distribution of mass and charge, and of the energy- and angular momentum loss for grazing collisions of heavy nuclei at low bombarding energies. The overall agreement between the predictions and experimental results of collisions with a major loss of kinetic energy supports the picture of the reaction, where deep inelastic reactions are a part of the regime of grazing collisions, a regime distinct from reactions where the nuclear surfaces merge to form a fused system which may later disintegrate. These deep inelastic grazing reactions are to a large extent governed by the quantal energy width associated with the finite collision time and the description is thus rather different from the classical picture of a friction mechanism.