The nucleus-nucleus interaction potential has been studied within the relativistic mean field theory. The systematics of the relativistic effects have been investigated by analyzing the relation between the potential and the bombarding energy as a function of the impact parameter. It is shown that the potential barriers are noticeably sensitive to the bombarding energy for a given impact parameter. At large bombarding energies the slope at the potential edge decreases with the impact parameter. Comparisons with a non-relativistic treatment shows that relativistic effects cannot be ignored at bombarding energies around and larger than 100 MeV/nucleon.

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