  Background: Heavy-ion induced two-nucleon transfer reactions are powerful
tools to reveal peculiar aspects of the atomic nucleus, such as pairing
correlations, single-particle and collective degrees of freedom, and more.
Also, these processes are in competition with the direct meson exchange in the
double charge exchange reactions, which have recently attracted great interest
due to their possible connection to neutrinoless double-beta decay. In this
framework, the exploration of two-nucleon transfer reactions in the 20Ne+116Cd
collision at energies above the Coulomb barrier is particularly relevant since
the 116Cd nucleus is a candidate for the double-beta decay. Methods: We
measured the excitation energy spectra and absolute cross sections for the two
reactions using the MAGNEX large acceptance magnetic spectrometer to detect the
ejectiles. We performed direct coupled reaction channels and sequential
distorted wave Born approximation calculations using the double folding S\~ao
Paulo potential to model the initial and final state interactions. The
spectroscopic amplitudes for two- and singleparticle transitions were derived
by different nuclear structure approaches: microscopic large-scale shell model,
interacting boson model-2 and quasiparticle random phase approximation.
Results: The calculations are able to reproduce the experimental cross sections
for both two-neutron and twoproton transfer reactions. The role of couplings
with the inelastic channels are found to be important in the two-proton
transfer case. A competition between the direct and the sequential process is
found in the reaction mechanism. For the two-proton transfer case, the
inclusion of the 1g7/2 and 2d5/2 orbitals in the model space is crucial.
