Momentum distributions in light halo nuclei and structure constraints

¹ Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, DCTA, 12228-900, São José dos Campos, Brazil
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
³ Instituto de Fomento e Coordenação Industrial, 12228-901, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil
⁴ Instituto de Física Teórica, UNESP, 01156-970, São Paulo, Brazil
⁵ CCNH, Universidade Federal do ABC, 09210-580, Santo André, Brazil

^a e-mail: lucasufsj@gmail.com
^b e-mail: ffbellotti@gmail.com
^c e-mail: tobias@ita.br
^d e-mail: yamashita@ift.unesp.br
^e e-mail: tomio@ift.unesp.br

Published online: 25 March 2016

Abstract

The core recoil momentum distribution of neutron-rich isotopes of light exotic nuclei is studied within a three-body model, where the nuclei are described by a core and two neutrons, with interactions dominated by the s-wave channel. In our framework, the two-body subsystems should have large scattering lengths in comparison with the interaction range allowing to use a three-body model with a zero-range force. The ground-state halo wave functions in momentum space are obtained by using as inputs the two-neutron separation energy and the energies of the singlet neutron-neutron and neutron-core virtual states. Within our model, we obtain the momentum probability densities for the Borromean exotic nuclei ¹¹Li and ²²C. In the case of the core recoil momentum distribution of 11Li, a fair reproduction of the experimental data was obtained, without free parameters, considering only the two-body low-energies. By analysing the obtained core momentum distribution in face of recent experimental data, we verify that such data are constraining the ²²C two-neutron separation energy to a value between 100 and 400 keV.