Breakup locations: Intertwining effects of nuclear structure and reaction dynamics

Abstract

Studies at the Australian National University aim to distinguish breakup of the projectile like-nucleus that occurs when approaching the target from that when receding from the target. Helped by breakup simulations, observables have been found that are sensitive to the breakup location, and thus to the mean-lives of unbound states; sensitivity to even sub-zeptosecond lifetime is found. These results provide insights to understand the reaction dynamics of weakly bound nuclei at near barrier energies.Understanding the interactions of weakly bound nuclei, and their reaction outcomes, is a key challenge in nuclear reactions research [1]. For well-bound nuclei, collisions near the barrier are reasonably well-described by including couplings to quantum states of the approaching nuclei. For weakly bound nuclei, the reaction dynamics has added complexity due the presence of low-lying particle unbound states. The situation is made even more challenging by the fact that weakly bound nuclei can breakup not only following direct excitation of continuum states (direct breakup), but also following nucleon transfer. The latter occurs when the neighbouring nuclei, formed by transfer, are themselves weakly bound or unbound. Modelling this is a major theoretical challenge, and currently there is no quantum *