The -nucleus potential: towards a solution of a long-standing problem

P. Mohr; Zs. Fülöp; Gy. Gyürky; Z. Halász; G. G. Kiss; S. R. Kovács; Zs. Mátyus; T. N. Szegedi; T. Szücs

doi:10.1140/epja/s10050-025-01551-3

2023 Impact factor 2.6

Hadrons and Nuclei

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. A (2025) 61: 89
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-025-01551-3

Review

The $α$ $\alpha$ -nucleus potential: towards a solution of a long-standing problem

P. Mohr¹^a, Zs. Fülöp¹, Gy. Gyürky¹, Z. Halász¹, G. G. Kiss¹, S. R. Kovács¹^,2, Zs. Mátyus¹^,2, T. N. Szegedi¹ and T. Szücs¹

¹ HUN-REN Institute for Nuclear Research (ATOMKI), P.O.Box 51, 4001, Debrecen, Hungary
² University of Debrecen, Doctoral School of Physics, Egyetem tér 1, 4032, Debrecen, Hungary

^a mohr@atomki.hu

Received: 26 February 2025
Accepted: 21 March 2025
Published online: 28 April 2025

Abstract

This study presents an overview over $α$ $\alpha$ -nucleus potentials which are the essential ingredient for the calculation of cross sections and astrophysical reaction rates for $α$ $\alpha$ -induced reactions on intermediate mass and heavy nuclei within the statistical model. Recent experimental data for Mo + $α$ $\alpha$ have been chosen as an example to illustrate the properties of several widely used $α$ $\alpha$ -nucleus potentials. The delicate role of the imaginary part of the potential at large radii is discussed which is the origin of the widely discrepant predictions of the different potentials at low energies far below the Coulomb barrier. The Atomki-V2 potential circumvents the complications with the imaginary part and provides very good predictions for the recent Mo + $α$ $\alpha$ data and also for most other recent reactions and is thus an excellent basis for the calculation of reaction rates. But further improvements are possible, and some ideas in this direction are given in the discussion.

Communicated by David Blaschke.

© The Author(s) 2025

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.