Chiral effective field theory (EFT) provides a systematic and controlled approach to low-energy nuclear physics. Here, we use chiral EFT to calculate low-energy weak Gamow-Teller transitions. We put special emphasis on the role of two-body (2b) weak currents within the nucleus, and discuss their applications in predicting physical observables.
Comparing the capture cross sections calculated without the breakup effect and experimental complete fusion cross sections, the breakup was analyzed in reactions with weakly bound projectiles $^{6,7,9}$Li, $^{9,11}$Be, and $^{6,8}$He. A trend of a systematic behavior for the complete fusion suppression as a function of the target charge and bombarding energy is not achieved. The quasielastic backscattering is suggested to be an useful tool to study the behavior of the breakup probability in reactions with weakly bound projectiles.
The dynamical model of pion electroproduction has been extended to investigate the weak pion production reactions. The predicted cross sections of neutrino-induced pion production reactions are in good agreement with the existing data. We show that the renormalized(dressed) axial N-$Δ$ form factor contains large dynamical pion cloud effects and this renormalization effects are crucial in getting agreement with the data. We conclude that the N-$Δ$ transitions predicted by the constituent quark model are consistent with the existing neutrino induced pion production data in the $Δ$ region.
We investigate the thermal kaon process,in which kaons are thermally produced via nucleon-nucleon collisions.This process is relevant to nonequilibrium dynamics of kaon condensation inside neutron stars.The reaction rates for these processes are calculated, and their temperature and density dependences are compared with those of other reaction rates.It is shown that the thermal kaon process is dominant over other relevant weak reactions throughout the nonequilibrium process, such as the kaon-induced Urca and the modified Urca reactions, and may control the entire evolution of the kaon condensa…
The status of "ab initio" microscopic calculations of the 2H(p,gamma)3He and 3He(p,e+nu_e)4He reactions is reviewed. The methods used to generate accurate nuclear ground- and scattering-state wave functions, and to construct realistic electro-weak transition operators are described. The uncertainties in the theoretical predictions, particularly those relevant to the p-3He weak capture, are discussed. For the dp radiative capture, the theoretical results are compared with the TUNL data in the energy range 0--100 keV.
The weak production of Lambdas in nucleon-nucleon scattering is studied in a meson-exchange framework. The weak transition operator for the $NN \to N Λ$ reaction is identical to a previously developed weak strangeness-changing transition potential $ΛN \to NN$ that describes the nonmesonic decay of hypernuclei. The initial $NN$ and final $YN$ state interaction has been included by using realistic baryon-baryon forces that describe the available elastic scattering data. The total and differential cross sections as well as the parity-violating asymmetry are studied for the reaction $pn \to pΛ$. T…
Photo nuclear reactions are shown to be used for studying neutrino/weak nuclear responses involved in astro-neutrino nuclear interactions and double beta decays. Charged current weak responses for ground and excited states are studied by using photo nuclear reactions through isobaric analog states of those states, while neutral current weak responses for excited states are studied by using photo nuclear reactions through the excited states. The weak interaction strengths are studied by measuring the cross sections of the photo nuclear reactions, and the spin and parity of the state are studied…
A dynamics of low-energy nuclear forces is investigated for low-energy electromagnetic and weak nuclear reactions with the deuteron in the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model of light nuclei by example of the neutron-proton radiative capture (M1-capture) n + p -> D + photon, the photomagnetic disintegration of the deuteron photon + D -> n + p and weak reactions of astrophysical interest. These are the solar proton burning p + p -> D + positron + nu_e, the pep-process p + electron + p -> D + nu_e and the neutrino and anti-neutrino disintegration of the deuteron caused by charged nu_e + D -> electron + p +…
The use of radioactive ion beams is shown to offer the possibility to study collective pairing states at high excitation energy, which are not usually accessible with stable projectiles because of large energy mismatch. In the case of two-neutron stripping reactions induced by 6He, we predict a population of the Giant Pairing Vibration in 208Pb or 116Sn with cross sections of the order of a millibarn, dominating over the mismatched transition to the ground state.
The T matrix of the LambdaN-> NN reaction, which is a strangeness changing weak process, is derived. The explicit formulas of the spin observables are given for s-wave p-Lambda final states which kinematically corresponds to inverse reaction of the weak nonmesonic decay of Lambda hypernuclei. One can study interferences between amplitudes of parity- conserving and violating, spin- singlet and triplet and isospin- singlet and triplet. Most of them are not available in the study of the nonmesonic decay. They clarify structure of the reaction and constrain strongly theoretical models for weak hyp…
We present a microscopic calculation of the 6He beta-decay into the ground state of 6Li. To this end we use the impulse approximation to describe the nuclear weak current. The ground state wave functions are obtained from the solution of the nuclear 6-body problem. The nucleonnucleon interaction is described via the J-matrix inverse scattering potential (JISP), and the nuclear problem is solved using the hyperspherical-harmonics approach. This approach results in numerical accuracy of about 2 per mil in the transition matrix element. Bearing in mind that the contribution of meson-exchange curr…
We discuss the effects of electron capture by the projectile and the Coulomb explosion of a molecular projectile on the electron screening in low energy nuclear reactions in laboratory. Using the idea of equilibrium charge, we show that the electron capture of projectile leads to a screening energy which significantly exceeds the adiabatic limit in the simple consideration for the D(d,p)T reaction and provides a possibility to explain the large screening energy claimed in the analysis of experimental data. We then show that the Coulomb explosion can result in a large apparent screening energy …
I summarize three recent calculations of electromagnetic reactions on deuterium in chiral perturbation theory. All of these calculations were carried out to O(Q^4), i.e. next-to-next-to-leading order. The reactions discussed here are: elastic electron-deuteron scattering, Compton scattering on deuterium, and the photoproduction of neutral pions from deuterium at threshold.
The radiative thermal neutron capture cross sections over the range of thermal energies from 1 keV to 1 MeV are studied in statistical Hauser-Feshbach formalism. The optical model potential is constructed by folding the density dependent M3Y nucleon-nucleon interaction with radial matter densities of target nuclei obtained from relativistic-mean-field (RMF) theory. The standard nuclear reaction code TALYS1.8 is used for calculation of cross sections. The nuclei studied in the present work reside near the $Z=28$ proton shell closure and are of astrophysical interests taking part in p-, s-, and …
We extend our previous studies of the neutrino-induced reactions on 12C and muon capture to include partial occupation of nuclear subshells in the framework of the continuum random phase approximation. We find, in contrast to the work by Auerbach et al., that a partial occupation of the p1/2 subshell reduces the inclusive cross sections only slightly. The extended model describes the muon capture rate and the 12C(nu_e,e-)12N cross section very well. The recently updated flux and the improved model bring the calculated 12C(nu_mu,mu^-)12N cross section (~ 17.5 10^{-40} cm^2) and the data (12.4 +…
Low-energy 17O(n,g)18O reaction within the microscopic potential model and its role for the weak r-process
Ho Chi Minh City University of Education(胡志明市教育大学);California State University East Bay(加州州立大学东湾分校);Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory(劳伦斯利弗莫尔国家实验室);San Diego State University(圣地亚哥州立大学)
We report a significant improvement of an approximate method of including electron Coulomb distortion in electron induced reactions at momentum transfers greater than the inverse of the size of the target nucleus. In particular, we have found a new parametrization for the elastic electron scattering phase shifts that works well at all electron energies greater than 300 $MeV$. As an illustration, we apply the improved approximation to the $(e,e'p)$ reaction from medium and heavy nuclei. We use a relativistic ``single particle'' model for $(e,e'p)$ as as applied to $^{208}Pb(e,e'p)$ and to recen…
We show that chiral symmetry and gauge invariance enforce relations between the short-distance physics that occurs in a number of electroweak and pionic reactions on light nuclei. Within chiral perturbation theory this is manifested via the appearance of the same axial isovector two-body contact term in pi- d -> n n gamma, p-wave pion production in NN collisions, tritium beta decay, pp fusion, nu d scattering, and the hep reaction. Using a Gamow-Teller matrix element obtained from calculations of pp fusion as input we compute the neutron spectrum obtained in pi- d -> n n gamma. With the short-…
I summarize two recent applications of chiral perturbation theory to electromagnetic reactions on deuterium: elastic electron-deuteron scattering, and Compton scattering on deuterium. Both calculations have now been carried out to three orders in the chiral expansion. The expansion shows good convergence and is able to reproduce data for q < 600 MeV in e-d and for omega=55-95 MeV in gamma-d. These results demonstrate that ChiPT can be used to reliably compute operators and wave functions for low-momentum-transfer reactions in light nuclear systems.
The results of a new calculation of the astrophysical S-factor for the proton weak capture on 3He are here reviewed. The methods used to obtain very accurate initial and final state wave functions and to construct the nuclear weak current operator are described. Finally the implications of these results for the Super-Kamiokande solar neutrino data are discussed.
A self-contained Fortran-90 program based on a classical trajectory model with stochastic breakup is presented, which should be a powerful tool for quantifying complete and incomplete fusion, and breakup in reactions induced by weakly-bound two-body projectiles near the Coulomb barrier. The code calculates complete and incomplete fusion cross sections and their angular momentum distribution, as well as breakup observables (angle, kinetic energy and relative energy distributions).
In a series of papers, cited in the main body of the paper below, detailed calculations have been presented which show that electromagnetic and weak interactions can induce low energy nuclear reactions to occur with observable rates for a variety of processes. A common element in all these applications is that the electromagnetic energy stored in many relatively slow moving electrons can -under appropriate circumstances- be collectively transferred into fewer, much faster electrons with energies sufficient for the latter to combine with protons (or deuterons, if present) to produce neutrons vi…
We investigate the odd-even staggering (OES) in reaction cross sections of weakly bound nuclei with a Glauber theory, taking into account the pairing correlation with the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) method. We first discuss the pairing gap in extremely weakly bound nuclei and show that the pairing gap persists in the limit of zero separation energy limit even for single-particle orbits with the orbital angular momenta $l=0$ and $l=1$. We then introduce the OES parameter defined as the second derivative of reaction cross sections with respect to the mass number, and clarify the relation betwe…
The nucleon form factors in free space are usually thought to be modified when a nucleon is bound in a nucleus or immersed in a nuclear medium. We investigate effects of the density-dependent axial and weak-vector form factors on the electro-neutrino ($ν_e$) and anti-electro-neutrino $({\bar ν_e})$ reactions via neutral current (NC) for a nucleon in nuclear medium or $^{12}$C. For the density-dependent form factors, we exploit the quark-meson-coupling (QMC) model, and apply them to the $ν_e$ and ${\bar ν_e}$ induced reactions by NC. About 12% decrease of the total cross section by $ν_e$ reacti…
The $(n,α)$ reaction contributes in many processes of energy generation and nucleosynthesis in stellar environment. Since experimental data are available for a limited number of nuclei and in restricted energy ranges, at present only theoretical studies can provide predictions for all astrophysically relevant $(n,α)$ reaction cross sections. The purpose of this work is to study $(n,α)$ reaction cross sections for a set of nuclei contributing in the weak s-process nucleosynthesis. Theory framework is based on the statistical Hauser-Feshbach model implemented in TALYS code with nuclear masses an…
We study the role of light nuclear clusters in simulations of core-collapse supernovae. Expressions for the reaction rates are developed for a large selection of charged current absorption and scattering processes with light clusters. Medium modifications are taken into account at the mean-field level. We explore the possible impact on the supernova dynamics and the neutrino signal during the mass accretion phase prior to the possible explosion onset as well as during the subsequent protoneutron star deleptnoization after the explosion onset has been launched.
Complete fusion excitation functions of reactions involving breakup are studied by using the empirical coupled-channel (ECC) model with breakup effects considered. An exponential function with two parameters is adopted to describe the prompt-breakup probability in the ECC model. These two parameters are fixed by fitting the measured prompt-breakup probability or the complete fusion cross sections. The suppression of complete fusion at energies above the Coulomb barrier is studied by comparing the data with the predictions from the ECC model without the breakup channel considered. The results s…
Adiabatic distorted-wave approximation (ADWA) study of three-body $(d,p)$ transfer reactions [G.W. Bailey, N.K. Timofeyuk, and J.A. Tostevin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 162502 (2016)] reported strong sensitivity of cross sections to the neutron-proton $(np)$ interaction model when the nucleon-nucleus optical potential is nonlocal. The verification of this unusual finding using more reliable methods is aimed for in the present work. A rigorous Faddeev-type three-body scattering theory is applied to the study of $(d,p)$ transfer reactions. The equations for transition operators are solved in the mome…
The production of $α$-particles in reactions using both the strongly and weakly bound projectiles at energies around the Coulomb barrier show several interesting features. To understand these, the role of various reaction mechanisms responsible for $α$-production, such as non-capture breakup, capture of only one of the fragments subsequent to projectile breakup and their contribution to reaction cross sections have been investigated. A systematic study of the $α$-particle production based on available data for various projectile target systems have been performed and a classification based on …
The impact of new ($α$, n) reaction rates on the weak s-process in metal-poor massive stars
Institute for Frontiers in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Beijing Normal University(北京师范大学前沿天文与天体物理研究所);School of Physics and Astronomy, Beijing Normal University(北京师范大学物理与天文学院);GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung(德国重离子研究中心);Department of Physics and Institute of Theoretical Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong(香港中文大学物理系及理论物理研究所);Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI), The University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Study, The University of Tokyo(东京大学宇宙物质研究机构( Kavli 宇宙物理数学研究所));Department of Astronomy, Beijing Normal University(北京师范大学天文系)
After a successful core-collapse supernova, a neutrino-driven wind develops where it is possible to synthesize lighter heavy elements ($30<Z<45$). In the early galaxy, the origin of these elements is associated to the r-process and to an additional process. Here we assume the additional process corresponds to the weak r-process or alpha-process taking place in neutrino-driven winds. Based on a trajectory obtained from hydrodynamical simulations we study the astrophysics and nuclear physics uncertainties with our main focus on the $(α,n)$ reactions. These are critical to redistribute the matter…
Neutrino-driven winds following core collapse supernovae have been proposed as a suitable site where the so-called light heavy elements (between Sr to Ag) can be synthetized. For moderately neutron-rich winds, ($α,n$) reactions play a critical role in the weak r process, becoming the main mechanism to drive nuclear matter towards heavier elements. In this paper we summarize the sensitivity of network-calculated abundances to the astrophysical conditions, and to uncertainties in the ($α,n$) reaction rates. A list of few ($α,n$) reactions were identified to dominate the uncertainty in the calcul…
Creation of electron or exciton by external fields in a system with initially statistically independent unrelaxed vibrational modes leads to an initial condition term. The contribution of this term in the time convolution generalized master equation approach is studied in second order of the perturbation theory in the path integral formalism. The developed approach, applied for analysis of dynamics in the photosynthetic reaction center, exhibits the key role of the initial condition terms at the primary stage of electron transfer.