Abstracts of British Patents, Department of Metallurgy, University of Surrey, Guildford

Clustering and Correlations in Neutron Haloes

“…As a first step towards investigating the nature of the events with E p /E n ¿1.4 each was examined to verify that it corresponded to a well defined event in both the charged particle and neutron detectors. Of the 7 events observed in the breakup of 14 Be, all but one survived. The 6 remaining events thus appear to exhibit characteristics consistent with detection of a multineutron cluster from the breakup of 14 Be.…”

“…In the case of the 4 events produced in the reactions with 11 Li no correlation appears to exist with any particular fragment. The left panel in figure 7 displays in more detail the region of the particle identification spectrum for the breakup of 14 Be into lighter Be isotopes, together with the 7 events in question. Clearly the resolution in PID does not allow the observed events to be unambiuously associated with a 10 Be fragment.…”

“…This approach exploits the possibility that multineutron halo nuclei and other very neutron-rich systems contain components of the wavefunction in which the neutrons exist in a relatively compact cluster-like configuration. A new method is introduced here for the direct detection of neutral clusters and the results obtained from an analysis of data acquired with beams of 11 Li and 14 Be is presented. §2.…”

“…The same analysis has been applied to dissociation of 14 Be by a C target, in order to investigate the influence of the reaction mechanism. A result which hints at a somewhat larger separation, r rms nn = 7.6 ± 1.7 fm, was obtained.…”

“…By combining the information extracted from the core-n channel with the n-n correlation functions, the analysis can be extended to extract the average lifetime of the core-n resonances. If the n-n separation in 14 Be is fixed to that obtained for dissociation by Pb, r RM S nn = 5.6 ± 1.0 fm, the delay between the emission of the neutrons τ nn needed to describe the n-n correlation function for the C target may be introduced. As The very lightest nuclei have long played a fundamental role in testing nuclear models and the underlying nucleon-nucleon interaction.…”