Core swelling in spherical nuclei: An indication of the saturation of nuclear density

Background: Nuclear radius is one of the most important and basic properties of atomic nuclei and its evolution is closely related to the saturation of the nuclear density in the internal region but the systematics of the nuclear radii for the neutron-rich unstable nuclei is not well known. Purpose: Motivated by the recent interaction cross section measurement which indicates the 48Ca core swelling in the neutron-rich Ca isotopes, we explore the mechanism of the enhancement of the neutron and proton radii for spherical nuclei. Methods: Microscopic Hartree-Fock calculations with three sets of Skyrme-type effective interactions are performed for the neutron-rich Ca, Ni and Sn isotopes. The total reaction cross sections for the Ca isotopes are evaluated with the Glauber model to compare them with the recent cross section data. Results: We obtain good agreement with the measured cross sections and charge radii. The neutron and proton radii of the various "core" configurations are extracted from the full Hartree-Fock calculation and discuss the core swelling mechanism. Conclusions: The core swelling phenomena occur depending on the properties of the occupying valence single-neutron states to minimize the energy loss that comes from the saturation of the densities in the internal region, which appears to be prominent in light nuclei such as Ca isotopes.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, to appear in a Rapid Communication in Phys. Rev.

Correlated-Gaussian approach to linear-chain states -Case of four α\alpha-particles-

We show that correlated Gaussians with good angular momentum and parity provide flexible basis functions for specific elongated shape. As its application we study linear-chain states of four-alpha particles in variation-after-projection calculations in which all the matrix elements are evaluated analytically. We find possible chain states for $J=0^+$, $2^+$, $4^+$ and perhaps $6^+$ with the bandhead energy being about 33 MeV from the ground state of $^{16}$O. No chain states with $J\geq 8$ are found. The nature of the rotational sequence of the chain states is clarified in contrast to a rigid-body rotation. The quadrupole deformation parameters estimated from the chain states increase from 0.59 to 1.07 for $2^+$ to $6^+$. This work suggests undeveloped fields for the correlated Gaussians beyond those problems which have hitherto been solved successfully.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Emergence of nuclear clustering in electric-dipole excitations of 6^6Li

Nuclear clustering plays an important role, especially in the dynamics of light nuclei. The importance of the emergence of the nuclear clustering was discussed in the recent measurement of the photoabsorption cross sections as it offered the possibility of the coexistence of various excitation modes which are closely related to the nuclear clustering. To understand the excitation mechanism, we study the electric-dipole ($E1$) responses of $^6$Li with a fully microscopic six-body calculation. The ground-state wave function is accurately described with a superposition of correlated Gaussian (CG) functions with the aid of the stochastic variational method. The final-state wave functions are also expressed by a number of the CG functions including important configurations to describe the six-body continuum states excited by the $E1$ field. We found that the out-of-phase transitions occur due to the oscillations of the valence nucleons against the $^4$He cluster at the low energies around 10 MeV indicating ``soft'' giant-dipole-resonance(GDR)-type excitations, which are very unique in the $^6$Li system but could be found in other nuclear systems. At the high energies beyond $\sim 30$ MeV typical GDR-type transitions occur. The $^3$He-$^3$H clustering plays an important role to the GDR phenomena in the intermediate energy regions around 20 MeV.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure

Momentum distribution and correlation of two-nucleon relative motion in 6^6He and 6^6Li

The momentum distribution of relative motion between two nucleons gives information on the correlation in nuclei. The momentum distribution is calculated for both $^{6}$He and $^6$Li which are described in a three-body model of $\alpha$+$N$+$N$. The ground state solution for the three-body Hamiltonian is obtained accurately using correlated basis functions. The momentum distribution depends on the potential model for the $N$-$N$ interaction. With use of a realistic potential, the $^6$He momentum distribution exhibits a dip around 2 fm$^{-1}$ characteristic of $S$-wave motion. In contrast to this, the $^6$Li momentum distribution is very similar to that of the deuteron; no dip appears because it is filled with the $D$-wave component arising from the tensor force.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure

Green's function method for strength function in three-body continuum

Practical methods to compute dipole strengths for a three-body system by using a discretized continuum are analyzed. New techniques involving Green's function are developed, either by correcting the tail of the approximate wave function in a direct calculation of the strength function or by using a solution of a driven Schroedinger equation in a summed expression of the strength. They are compared with the complex scaling method and the Lorentz integral transform, also making use of a discretized continuum. Numerical tests are performed with a hyperscalar three-body potential in the hyperspherical-harmonics formalism. They show that the Lorentz integral transform method is less practical than the other methods because of a difficult inverse transform. These other methods provide in general comparable accuracies.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Progress of Theoretical Physic

Electric dipole response of 6^6He: Halo-neutron and core excitations

Electric dipole ($E1$) response of $^{6}$He is studied with a fully microscopic six-body calculation. The wave functions for the ground and excited states are expressed as a superposition of explicitly correlated Gaussians (CG). Final state interactions of three-body decay channels are explicitly taken into account. The ground state properties and the low-energy $E1$ strength are obtained consistently with observations. Two main peaks as well as several small peaks are found in the $E1$ strength function. The peak at the high-energy region indicates a typical macroscopic picture of the giant dipole resonance, the out-of-phase proton-neutron motion. The transition densities of the lower-lying peaks exhibit in-phase proton-neutron motion in the internal region, out-of-phase motion near the surface region, and spatially extended neutron oscillation, indicating a soft-dipole mode (SDM) and its vibrationally excited mode.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Probing neutron-skin thickness with total reaction cross sections

We analyze total reaction cross sections, $\sigma_R$, for exploring their sensitivity to the neutron-skin thickness of nuclei. We cover 91 nuclei of O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ca, and Ni isotopes. The cross sections are calculated in the Glauber theory using the density distributions obtained with the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock method in 3-dimensional coordinate space. Defining a reaction radius, $a_R=\sqrt{\sigma_R/\pi}$, to characterize the nuclear size and target (proton or $^{12}$C) dependence, we find an empirical formula for expressing $a_R$ with the point matter radius and the skin thickness, and assess two practical ways of determining the skin thickness from proton-nucleus $\sigma_R$ values measured at different energies or from $\sigma_R$ values measured for different targets.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Nuclear surface diffuseness revealed in nucleon-nucleus diffraction

Nuclear surface provides useful information on nuclear radius, nuclear structure as well as properties of nuclear matter. We discuss the relationship between the nuclear surface diffuseness and elastic scattering differential cross section at the first diffraction peak of high-energy nucleon-nucleus scattering as an efficient tool in order to extract the nuclear surface information from limited experimental data involving short-lived unstable nuclei. The high-energy reaction is described by a reliable microscopic reaction theory, the Glauber model. Extending the idea of the black sphere model, we find one-to-one correspondence between the nuclear bulk structure information and proton elastic scattering diffraction peak. This implies that we can extract both the nuclear radius and diffuseness simultaneously, using the position of the first diffraction peak and its magnitude of the elastic scattering differential cross section. We confirm the reliability of this approach by using realistic density distributions obtained by a mean-field model.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.