The reaction mechanism of heavy ion scattering at intermediate energies

The contribution to the real and imaginary nucleus-nucleus (N-N) optical potential from nucleon-nucleon scattering in the medium is calculated in a local density approximation from a two Fermi sphere nuclear matter picture for the N-N collision. This reaction mechanism is shown to be dominant for ¹²C + ¹²C scattering at all considered energies (160 MeV < E_lab < 2250 MeV) giving a weakly energy dependent reaction cross section of about 900 mb. Inclusion of the collective 2⁺, 3^- excitations in a coupled channel calculations gives good agreement for both the measured elastic and inelastic 2⁺ cross section at E_lab = 1016 MeV. This fully microscopic parameter free calculation indicates that the energy dependence of the reaction cross section for this system is mostly due to the decrease of the collective contribution with increasing energy contrary to current theoretical models.