Observation of Long-Range Three-Body Coulomb Effects in the Decay of $^{16}\mathrm{Ne}$

Observation of Long-Range Three-Body Coulomb Effects in the Decay of ${}^{16}{Ne}$

K. W. Brown, R. J. Charity, L. G. Sobotka, Z. Chajecki, L. V. Grigorenko, I. A. Egorova, Yu. L. Parfenova, M. V. Zhukov, S. Bedoor, W. W. Buhro, J. M. Elson, W. G. Lynch, J. Manfredi, D. G. McNeel, W. Reviol, R. Shane, R. H. Showalter, M. B. Tsang, J. R. Winkelbauer, and A. H. Wuosmaa

Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 232501 – Published 2 December 2014

Abstract

The interaction of an $E / A = 57.6 − MeV$ ${}^{17}{Ne}$ beam with a Be target is used to populate levels in ${}^{16}{Ne}$ following neutron knockout reactions. The decay of ${}^{16}{Ne}$ states into the three-body ${}^{14}O + p + p$ continuum is observed in the High Resolution Array (HiRA). For the first time for a $2 p$ emitter, correlations between the momenta of the three decay products are measured with sufficient resolution and statistics to allow for an unambiguous demonstration of their dependence on the long-range nature of the Coulomb interaction. Contrary to previous measurements, our measured limit $Γ < 80 keV$ for the intrinsic decay width of the ground state is not in contradiction to the small values (of the order of keV) predicted theoretically.

Received 11 June 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.232501

Authors & Affiliations

K. W. Brown¹, R. J. Charity¹, L. G. Sobotka¹, Z. Chajecki², L. V. Grigorenko^3,4, I. A. Egorova⁵, Yu. L. Parfenova^3,6, M. V. Zhukov⁷, S. Bedoor⁸, W. W. Buhro², J. M. Elson¹, W. G. Lynch², J. Manfredi², D. G. McNeel⁸, W. Reviol¹, R. Shane², R. H. Showalter², M. B. Tsang², J. R. Winkelbauer², and A. H. Wuosmaa⁸

¹Departments of Chemistry and Physics, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri 63130, USA
²National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
³Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, JINR, RU-141980 Dubna, Russia
⁴Russian Research Center “The Kurchatov Institute”, Kurchatov square 1, RU-123182 Moscow, Russia
⁵Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, JINR, RU-141980 Dubna, Russia
⁶Skobel’tsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, RU-119991 Moscow, Russia
⁷Fundamental Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, S-41296 Göteborg, Sweden
⁸Department of Physics, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008, USA