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Investigating multi-channel quantum tunneling in heavy-ion fusion reactions with Bayesian spectral deconvolution

Excitations of colliding nuclei during a nuclear reaction considerably affect fusion cross sections at energies around the Coulomb barrier. It has been demonstrated that such channel coupling effects can be represented in terms of a distribution of multiple fusion barriers. We here apply a Bayesian approach to analyze the so called fusion barrier distributions. This method determines simultaneously the barrier parameters and the number of barriers. We particularly investigate the $^{16}$O+$^{144}$Sm and $^{16}$O+$^{154}$Sm systems in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. The present analysis indicates that the fusion barrier distribution for the former system is most consistent with three fusion barriers, even though the experimental data show only two distinct peaks.