The alpha-particle structure of ⁴⁴Ti

The Buck-Dover-Vary cluster model is used to generate several bands of alpha-particle cluster states, labelled by the principal quantum numbers N=12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 in ⁴⁴Ti. Various cluster core effective potentials are considered, and the one based on a realistic folding integral with a finite-range Gaussian interaction is found to be the most satisfactory. It is similar to the unique optical potential, deduced from alpha -⁴⁰Ca elastic scattering over a wide range of energies, and so offers the opportunity of unifying the descriptions of the bound-state and scattering phenomena in this nucleus. The authors calculate excitation energies, alpha decay widths and mean-square radii for the cluster states. They thereby find that the N=15 negative parity band overlaps the N=16 positive parity band, in qualitative agreement with experiment.