ION-ION POTENTIAL FOR NEUTRON-RICH RADIOACTIVE BEAMS

The characteristic features of ion-ion potentials for neutron-rich nuclei are studied starting from densities obtained from the Hartree-Fock approach with Skyrme forces. The progressive development of a neutron skin is evidenced as one moves towards the drip-line. As a consequence of the neutron skin, explicit calculations of the ion-ion potential obtained by folding an effective nucleon-nucleon interaction show that the potential has a larger diffuseness, an effect that cannot be mocked up by a simple scaling of the nuclear size, as in the standard parametrization of the ion-ion potential. Concerning the effect on the reaction processes, we show that signatures of this larger diffuseness can be found in large-angle elastic scattering at energies above the barrier and subbarrier fusion cross sections.