Effects of configuration mixing in heavy-ion elastic scattering

A theoretical study of the influence of configuration mixing on elastic scattering cross section is performed for the system 16 O + 27 Al at 100 MeV. A simple two- state model space, including the 27 Al 5/2 + ground and 5/2 + excited state at 2.73 MeV, is used in the coupled channel equations. The results indicate that even a weak degree of mixing is able to sizeably affect the elastic cross section, determining mainly a damping of Fraunhofer oscillations, as observed in the experiments.