- Letter
Reexamination of fusion hindrance in astrophysical and reactions
Phys. Rev. C 112, L061601 – Published 17 December, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/6hxy-j6dv
Abstract
Determining the energy dependence of fusion cross sections at extremely low energies is crucial for various astrophysical processes. In the previous study by Jiang et al. [Phys. Rev. C 75, 015803 (2007)], it was concluded that fusion cross sections for the system rapidly drop off as the energy decreases. We here reexamine this hindrance phenomenon. While the previous study fitted the logarithmic slope of fusion cross sections with a function of and sought the optimum value of and with , we refit the data with the same function for but by releasing the restriction on . We find that the optimum values of significantly deviate from . For the system, the presence or the absence of the hindrance phenomenon depends on a fitting procedure and a selection of data sets. On the other hand, for the system, we show that the optimum values of are smaller than regardless of the details of the fitting procedure, indicating the absence of hindrance in the fusion cross sections.