We study the spatial structure of four valence neutrons in the ground state of $^8$He and $^{18}$C nuclei using a core+4$n$ model. For this purpose, we employ a density-dependent contact interaction among the valence neutrons, and solve the five-body Hamiltonian in the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) approximation. We show that two neutrons with the coupled spin of $S$=0 exhibit a strong dineutron correlation around the surface of these nuclei, whereas the correlation between the two dineutrons is much weaker. Our calculation indicates that the probability of the (1p$_{3/2})^4$ and [(1p$_{3/2})^2$ (p$_{1/2})^2$] configurations in the ground state wave function of $^8$He nucleus is 34.9% and 23.7%, respectively. This is consistent with the recent experimental finding with the $^8$He($p,t)^6$He reaction, that is, the ground state wave function of $^8$He deviates significantly from the pure (1p$_{3/2})^4$ structure.
We extend the method of antisymmetrized molecular dynamics to investigate dineutron correlation. We apply this method to $^{10}$Be as an example and investigate the motion of two neutrons around a largely deformed $^8$Be core by analyzing the two-neutron overlap function around the core. We show that the core structure plays an important role in dineutron formation and expansion from the core and that the present framework is effective for the studies of dineutron correlation.
We discuss the correlation of the spin-singlet two-neutron pair, the dineutron correlation, in the ground and excited $0^+$ states of $^8$He by using a method to describe the dineutron correlation in neutron-rich nuclei, the dineutron condensate wave function. The shell-model configuration and the dineutron configuration compete with each other in the ground state of $^8$He. We compare the ground state structure of $^8$He with that of $^6$He and suggest that the dineutron correlation is weaker in the ground state of $^8$He than $^6$He. We also suggest the possibility of the dineutron condensat…
We propose a new framework by means of the dineutron condensate (DC) wave function to describe the dineutron correlation, which is characterized by the spatially strong correlation of a spin-zero neutron-neutron pair, in neutron-rich nuclei with an active deformed core surrounded by valence neutrons. Using the DC wave function for a 2$α$+2n system, which corresponds to a toy model for the $^{10}$Be system, we investigate the neutron-neutron correlation around the $2α$ core and discuss the mechanism of the dineutron formation at the surface of finite nuclei. To investigate dineutron correlation…
Two-neutron correlation in the $^1S$ channel in quasi two-dimensional (2D) neutron systems at zero temperature is studied by means of the BCS theory with finite-range effective nuclear forces. The dineutron correlation in low density neutron systems confined in an infinite slab is investigated in a simplified model that neutron motion of one direction is frozen. When the slab is thin enough, two neutrons form a tightly bound dineutron with a small size in the quasi-2D system, and a Bose dineutron gas is found in low density limit. With increase of Fermi momentum, the neutron system changes fro…
We propose a simple schematic model for two-neutron halo nuclei. In this model, the two valence neutrons move in a one-dimensional mean field, interacting with each other via a density-dependent contact interaction. We first investigate the ground state properties, and demonstrate that the dineutron correlation can be realized with this simple model due to the admixture of even- and odd-parity single-particle states. We then solve the time-dependent two-particle Schrödinger equation under the influence of a time-dependent one-body external field, in order to discuss the effect of dineutron cor…
We study the dinucleon (dineutron and diproton) correlation of the ground states of $^9$Li, $^{10}$Be, and $^{9,10}$C. We assume an $α+t$ core for $^9$Li, an $α+α$ core for $^{10}$Be and $^{10}$C, and an $α+^3$He core for $^9$C, and investigate the effect of core structure changes on the degree of dineutron formation and spatial expansion from the core. For $^9$Li, $t$ cluster breaking in the core significantly enhances the dineutron component inside the nuclei. Moreover, its component markedly depends on the strength of the spin-orbit interaction since a dineutron is fragile and dissociates r…
The nature of pairing correlations in neutron matter is re-examined. Working within the conventional approximation in which the $nn$ pairing interaction is provided by a realistic bare $nn$ potential fitted to scattering data, it is demonstrated that the standard BCS theory fails in regions of neutron number density where the pairing constant $λ$, depending crucially on density, has a non-BCS negative sign. We are led to propose a non-BCS scenario for pairing phenomena in neutron matter that involves the formation of a hidden dineutron state. In low-density neutron matter where the pairing con…
To discuss the dineutron correlation in the ground state, the quasi-free neutron knockout reaction on $^6$He is investigated.In the present work, the momentum distribution of the two emitted neutrons is calculated with the $α$~+~$n$~+~$n$ three-body model and a simple reaction model to assess the effects of the knockout process via the $^5$He resonance and the target dependence in the momentum distribution. A clear signature of the dineutron correlation can be obtained by choosing the kinematical condition so the process via the $^5$He resonance is excluded because the $^5$He resonance drastic…
We discuss the two-neutron emission decay of $^{26}$O nucleus from a viewpoint of dineutron correlations between the valence neutrons. We first discuss how the dineutron correlation is realized both in the coordinate space and in the momentum space by employing a three-body model. We then discuss the decay energy spectrum as well as the angular distribution of emitted neutrons. We show that an emission of two neutrons in back-to-back directions is enhanced, which we interpret as a clear manifestation of the dineutron correlation between the valence neutrons.
We investigate how strong a hypothetical 1S0 bound state of two neutrons would affect different observables in the neutron-deuteron reactions. To that aim we extend our momentum space scheme of solving three-nucleon Faddeev equations to incorporate in addition to the deuteron also the 1S0 dineutron bound state. We discuss effects induced by dineutron on the angular distribution of the neutron-deuteron elastic scattering and cross sections of the deuteron breakup. A comparison to the available data for neutron-deuteron total cross sections and elastic scattering angular distributions cannot dec…
The dineutron correlations and the crossover from superfluidity of neutron Cooper pairs in the $^1S_0$ pairing channel to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of dineutron pairs in both symmetric and neutron matter are studied within the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov theory, with the effective interaction PK1 of the relativistic mean-field approach in the particle-hole channel and the finite-range Gogny force in the particle-particle channel. The influence of the pairing strength on the behaviors of dineutron correlations is investigated. It is found that the neutron pairing gaps at the Fermi su…
We investigated the development and breaking of the dineutron correlation in $^{10}$Be by analyzing the elastic and inelastic scatterings with a framework combing the microscopic structure and reaction models. For studying the structure, the $^{10}$Be nucleus was constructed under the assumption of a four-body ($α+ α+ n + n$) cluster model. In this work, we focused on the change in the inner structure for the 0$_1^+$, 2$_1^+$, and 2$_2^+$ states when the strength of the spin-orbit interaction is varied. The inner structure, including various physical quantities such as energy, radius, and tran…
A recent measurement [Spyrou et al., PRL 108, 102501 (2012)] of the in-flight decay of 16Be into 14Be+n+n has been interpreted as the first case of dineutron emission. Here we point out that the inclusion of the n-n interaction neglected in the description of the direct three-body decay can generate strong enhancements at low n-n relative energy and angle, as observed, without any need to invoke dineutron decay.
Background. Knockout reactions with proton targets provide an invaluable tool to access the properties of two-neutron halo nuclei. Recently, experimental results for the average opening angle as a function of the intrinsic neutron momentum in 11Li have shown a localization of dineutron correlations on the nucleus surface. Purpose. Study the model dependence and the effect of distortion and absorption on the opening angle distributions to assess the reliability of this observable to extract properties of Borromean two-neutron halo nuclei. Method. A quasifree sudden model is used to describe the…
Background: Several previous studies provided contradicting results for the four-neutron system, some claiming the existence of a 0+ near-threshold resonance, others denying presence of any observable resonant states. Purpose: Since most of the studies employed enhanced two-neutron interactions to follow the evolution of an artificially bound state into a continuum one, we examine several enhancement schemes that produce a bound dineutron as well. Methods: We study the four-neutron system by solving exact four-particle equations. By varying the interaction enhancement factor we calculate two-d…
We present a reaction model to describe the fast removal of the $α$-particle core in $^8$He nucleus with eventual emission of four neutrons. The obtained four neutron energy distributions allows to explain the sharp low energy peak observed by studying the missing mass spectra of four neutrons in [Nature Vol. 606, p. 678], as a consequence of dineutron-dineutron correlations.
We discuss a decay of unbound nuclei beyond the neutron drip-line using a three-body model with a core nucleus and two valence neutrons. We particularly discuss the role of dineutron correlation between the valence neutrons in the two-neutron emission from the ground state of $^{26}$O and $^{10}$He nuclei. Our calculations clearly indicate that the emission of the two neutrons in the back-to-back direction is enhanced due to the dineutron correlation.
We discuss the energy and angular distributions of two emitted neutrons from the dipole excitation of typical weakly-bound Borromean nuclei, $^{11}$Li and $^6$He. To this end, we use a three-body model with a density dependent contact interaction between the valence neutrons. Our calculation indicates that the energy distributions for the valence neutrons are considerably different between the two nuclei, although they show similar strong dineutron correlations in the ground state to each other. This different behaviour of the energy distribution primarily reflects the interaction between the …
Within the complex-energy configuration interaction framework, we study correlations of valence neutrons to explain the behavior of charge radii in the neutron halo nuclei $^{6,8}$He. We find that the experimentally observed decrease of the charge radius between $^6$He and $^8$He is caused by a subtle interplay between three effects: dineutron correlations, a spin-orbit contribution to the charge radius, and a core swelling effect. We demonstrate that two-neutron angular correlations in the $2^+_1$ resonance of $^6$He differ markedly from the ground-state correlations in $^{6,8}$He.
We look for collective excitations originating from the strong surface pairing in unstable nuclei near the neutron drip-line. The soft dipole excitation is such a pairing mode as it exhibits a character of core-vs-dineutron motion. Possibility of the hydrodynamic phonon mode (the Anderson-Bogoliubov mode) is also discussed.
Multi-neutron correlations in light nuclei via ab-initio lattice simulations
Forschungszentrum Jülich（于利希研究中心）；King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM)（法赫德国王石油与矿物大学）；Gaziantep Islam Science and Technology University（加济安泰普伊斯兰科学与技术大学）；Universität Bonn（波恩大学）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）
We study the spatial correlation of a particle-hole pair in the isovector channel in $^{56}$Co and $^{40}$K nuclei. To this end, we employ the Hartree-Fock+Tamm-Dancoff approximation with the Skyrme interaction. We find a large concentration of the two-body density at positions where the neutron particle and the proton hole states locate on the opposite side to each other with respect to the core nucleus. This feature originates from a repulsive nature of the isovector residual interaction, which is in stark contrast to the dineutron correlation with an attractive pairing interaction between t…
This is the second of two papers which investigate cold dilute neutron matter on the lattice using pionless effective field theory. In the unitary limit, where the effective range is zero and scattering length is infinite, simple scaling relations relate thermodynamic functions at different temperatures. When the second virial coefficient is properly tuned, we find that the lattice results obey these scaling relations. We compute the energy per particle, pressure, spin susceptibility, dineutron correlation function, and an upper bound for the superfluid critical temperature.
Three-body decay is a rare decay mode observed in a handful of unbound rare isotopes. The angular and energy correlations between emitted nucleons are of particular interest, as they provide invaluable information on the interplay between structure and reaction aspects of the nuclear open quantum system. To study the mechanism of two-nucleon emission, we developed a time-dependent approach that allows us to probe emitted nucleons at long times and large distances. We successfully benchmarked the new method against the Green's function approach and applied it to low-energy two-proton and two-ne…
The particle unbound $^{26}$O nucleus is located outside the neutron drip line, and spontaneously decays by emitting two neutrons with a relatively long life time due to the centrifugal barrier. We study the decay of this nucleus with a three-body model assuming an inert $^{24}$O core and two valence neutrons. We first point out the importance of the neutron-neutron final state interaction in the observed decay energy spectrum. We also show that the energy and and angular distributions for the two emitted neutrons manifest a clear evidence for the strong neutron-neutron correlation in the thre…
The population and decay of two-nucleon resonances offer exciting new opportunities to explore dripline phenomena. The understanding of these systems requires a solid description of the three-body (core+N+N) continuum. The identification of a state with resonant character from the background of non-resonant continuum states in the same energy range poses a theoretical challenge. It is the purpose of this work to establish a robust theoretical framework to identify and characterize three-body resonances in a discrete basis. A resonance operator is proposed, which describes the sensitivity to ch…
The recent availability of radioactive beams has opened up a new era in nuclear physics. The interactions and structure of exotic nuclei close to the drip lines have been studied extensively world wide, and it has been revealed that unstable nuclei, having weakly bound nucleons, exhibit characteristic features such as a halo structure and a soft dipole excitation. We here review the developments of the physics of unstable nuclei in the past few decades. The topics discussed in this Chapter include the halo and skin structures, the Coulomb breakup, the dineutron correlation, the pair transfer r…
While diproton decay was first theorized in 1960 and first measured in 2002, it was first observed only in 2012. The measurement of $^{14}$Be in coincidence with two neutrons suggests that $^{16}$Be does decay through the simultaneous emission of two strongly correlated neutrons. In this work, we construct a full three-body model of $^{16}$Be (as $^{14}$Be + n + n) in order to investigate its configuration in the continuum and in particular the structure of its ground state. In order to describe the three-body system, effective n-$^{14}$Be potentials were constructed, constrained by the experi…
Background: Magnetic dipole (M1) excitation is the leading mode of nuclear excitation by the magnetic field, which couples unnatural-parity states. Since the M1 excitation occurs mainly for open-shell nuclei, the nuclear pairing effect is expected to play a role. As expected from the form of operator, this mode may provide the information on the spin-related properties, including the spin component of dineutron and diproton correlations. In general, the sum rule for M1 transition strength has not been derived yet. Purpose: To investigate the M1 excitation of the systems with two valence nucleo…
Background: Since the first experimental observation, two-nucleon radioactivity has gained renewed attention over the past fifteen years. The $^6$Be system is the lightest two-proton ground-state emitter, while $^{16}$Be has been recently proposed to be the first two-neutron ground-state emitter ever observed. A proper understanding of their properties and decay modes requires a reasonable description of the three-body continuum. Purpose: Study the ground-state properties of $^6$Be and $^{16}$Be within a general three-body model and investigate their nucleon-nucleon correlations in the continu…
We investigate the residual effect of lambda-proton strong interactions in pp correlations with one proton from lambda decays. It is found that the residual correlation is about 10% of the lambda-proton correlation strength, and has a broad distribution centered around q~40 MeV/c. The residual correlation cannot explain the observed structure on the tail of the recently measured pp correlation function in central Pb+Pb collisions by NA49 at the SPS.
We investigate eigenvalues of many-body systems interacting by two-body forces as well as those of random matrices. We find a strong linear correlation between eigenvalues and diagonal matrix elements if both of them are sorted from the smaller values to larger ones. By using this linear correlation we are able to predict reasonably all eigenvalues of given shell model Hamiltonian without complicated iterations.
We propose a new mean-field-type framework which can treat the strong correlation induced by the tensor force. To treat the tensor correlation we break the charge and parity symmetries of a single-particle state and restore these symmetries of the total system by the projection method. We perform the charge and parity projections before variation and obtain a Hartree-Fock-like equation, which is solved self-consistently. We apply the Hartree-Fock-like equation to the alpha particle and find that by breaking the parity and charge symmetries, the correlation induced by the tensor force is obtain…
Background$\colon$ The $^{29}$F system is located at the lower-N boundary of the "island of inversion" and is an exotic, weakly bound system. Little is known about this system beyond its two-neutron separation energy ($S_{2n}$) with large uncertainties. A similar situation is found for the low-lying spectrum of its unbound binary subsystem $^{28}$F. Purpose$\colon$ To investigate the configuration mixing, matter radius and neutron-neutron correlations in the ground state of $^{29}$F within a three-body model, exploring the possibility of $^{29}$F to be a two-neutron halo nucleus. Method$\colon…
Lying at the lower edge of the `island of inversion', neutron-rich Fluorine isotopes ($^{29-31}$F) provide a curious case to study the configuration mixing in this part of the nuclear landscape. Recent studies have suggested that a prospective two-neutron halo in the dripline nucleus $^{31}$F could be linked to the occupancy of the $pf$ intruder configurations. Focusing on configuration mixing, matter radii and neutron-neutron ($nn$) correlations in the ground-state of $^{31}$F, we explore various scenarios to analyze its possible halo nature as well as the low-lying electric dipole ($E$1) res…
Using the CGC formalism, we calculate the two-gluon rapidity correlations of strong colour fields in $pp$, $pA$ and $AA$ collisions, respectively. If one trigger gluon is fixed at central rapidity, a ridge-like correlation pattern is obtained in symmetry $pp$ and $AA$ collisions, and a huge bump-like correlation pattern is presented in asymmetry $pA$ collisions. It is demonstrated that the ridge-like correlation patterns are caused by the stronger correlation with the gluon of colour source. The transverse momentum and incident energy dependence of the ridge-like correlation pattern is also sy…
In the framework of Color Glass Condensate (CGC) effective field theory (EFT), we calculate two-gluon rapidity correlations in the leading and sub-leading orders of $p_\perp/Q_s$. In the leading order, both short- and long-range rapidity correlations are enhanced. In contrast, the contribution of sub-leading order is mainly short range quantum correlations. It is much smaller than that of the leading one, but is not negligible. Transverse momentum dependence of rapidity correlation shows that the leading order is sensitive to the saturation momentum of two incident particles, but the sub-leadi…
The neutron-rich $^{28,29}$F isotopes have been recently studied via knockout and interaction cross-section measurements. The $2n$ halo in $^{29}$F has been linked to the occupancy of $pf$ intruder configurations. We investigate bound and continuum states in $^{29}$F, focusing on the $E1$ response of low-lying excitations and the effect of dipole couplings on nuclear reactions. $^{29}\text{F}$ ($^{27}\text{F}+n+n$) wave functions are built within the hyperspherical harmonics formalism, and reaction cross sections are calculated using the Glauber theory. Continuum states and $B(E1)$ transition …
The Particle Number Projected Generator Coordinate Method is formulated for the pairing Hamiltonian in a detailed way in the projection after variation and the variation after projection methods. The dependence of the wave functions on the generator coordinate is analyzed performing numerical applications for the most relevant collective coordinates. The calculations reproduce the exact solution in the weak, crossover and strong pairing regimes. The physical insight of the Ansatz and its numerical simplicity make this theory an excellent tool to study pairing correlations in complex situations…
We consider the correlation function of an arbitrary number of local observables in quantum field theory. We show that, at tree level in the strong field regime, these correlations arise solely from fluctuations in the initial state. We obtain the general expression of these correlation functions in terms of the classical solution of the field equation of motion and its derivatives with respect to its initial conditions, that can be arranged graphically as the sum of labeled trees where the nodes are the individual observables, and the links are pairs of derivatives acting on them. For 3-point…
We use AdS/CFT correspondence to study two-particle correlations in heavy ion collisions at strong coupling. Modeling the colliding heavy ions by shock waves on the gravity side, we observe that at early times after the collision there are long-range rapidity correlations present in the two-point functions for the glueball and the energy-momentum tensor operators. We estimate rapidity correlations at later times by assuming that the evolution of the system is governed by ideal Bjorken hydrodynamics, and find that glueball correlations in this state are suppressed at large rapidity intervals, s…
Quantum Chromodynamics is thought to be the relativistic quantum field theory that describes the strong interaction of the Standard Model. This interaction produces mesons but it is also able to generate quark-quark (diquark) correlations inside baryons. In this work, we employ a continuum approach to QCD based on Dyson-Schwinger equations to calculate the electromagnetic form factors of the proton and analyze in a deeper way the consequences of having strong diquark correlations. Comparison with the experimental data reveals that the presence of strong diquark correlations within the proton i…
