Reply to 'Comment on "Spin and excitation energy dependence of fission survival for the 19F+175Lu system' " -: art. no. 019802

We agree with the preceding Comment that the evaporation residue cross-section measurement is indeed a sensitive tool to study nuclear viscosity. The CASCADE calculations with the improved level-density description used by Dioszegi reproduce our evaporation residue measurement without nuclear viscosity. However, our CASCADE calculations were not used to reproduce the absolute magnitude of the evaporation residue cross section but rather the shape of the spin distribution. The calculations show that the spin distribution can be fitted to the standard calculation without dissipation in agreement with the Comment by Dioszegi. We conclude that the need to include nuclear viscosity effects in previous measurements must be due to strong viscosity outside of the saddle point.