Nuclear fusion as a probe for octupole deformation in ${}^{224}$Ra

Abstract

$\text{Background}$: Nuclear fusion has been shown to be a perfect probe to study the different nuclear shapes. However, the possibility of testing octupole deformation of a nucleus with this tool has not been fully explored yet. The presence of a stactic octupole deformation in nuclei will enhanced a possible permanent electric dipole moment, leading to a possible demonstration of parity violation. $\text{Purpose}$: To check whether static octupole deformation or octupole vibration in fusion give qualitatively different results so that both situations can be experimentally disentangled. $\text{Method}$: Fusion cross sections are computed in the Coupled-Channels formalism making use of the Ingoing-Wave Boundary Conditions (IWBC) for the systems ${}^{16}$O+${}^{144}$Ba and ${}^{16}$O+${}^{224}$Ra. $\text{Results}$: Barrier distributions of the two considered schemes show different patterns. For the ${}^{224}$Ra case, the octupole deformation parameter is large enough to create a sizeable difference. $\text{Conclusions}$: The measurement of barrier distributions can be an excellent probe to clarify the presence of octupole deformation.

Important changes from previous version, 6 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Phys. Rev. C