Trends of total reaction cross sections for heavy ion collisions in the intermediate energy range.

Direct measurements of total reaction cross sections (sigma R) have been performed in the energy range of 10-300 MeV/nucleon for heavy ion collisions. A decrease of sigma R with increasing energy was observed for a wide range of masses of the colliding systems. The data suggest that sigma R reaches a minimum located around 300 MeV/nucleon independently of the projectile target combination.