Experimental fusion barrier distributions reflecting projectile octupole state coupling to prolate and oblate target nuclei

Fusion excitation functions have been measured spanning the entire barrier region in 1 MeV energy steps for the two systems ⁴⁰Ca + ¹⁹²Os, ¹⁹⁴Pt. Precautions were taken to ensure sufficiently small errors to allow for extraction of the distribution of fusion barriers from the second differential of the product of E and σ. These results are compared with coupled channel calculations which take into account the most important degrees of freedom of both projectile and target. The influence of the prolate deformation of ¹⁹²Os and the oblate deformation of ¹⁹²Pt as well as the octupole vibration of ⁴⁰Ca is apparent.