Radioactive beams and inverse kinematics: probing the quantal texture of the nuclear vacuum

Abstract

The properties of the quantum electrodynamic (QED) vacuum in general, and of the nuclear vacuum (ground) state in particular are determined by virtual processes implying the excitation of a photon and of an electron-positron pair in the first case and of, for example, the excitation of a collective quadrupole surface vibration and a particle-hole pair in the nuclear case. Signals of these processes can be detected in the laboratory in terms of what can be considered a nuclear analogue of Hawking radiation. An analogy which extends to other physical processes involving QED vacuum fluctuations like the Lamb shift, pair creation by γ−rays, van der Waals forces and the Casimir effect, to the extent that one concentrates on the eventual outcome resulting by forcing a virtual process to become real, and not on the role of the black hole role in defining the event horizon. In the nuclear case, the role of this event is taken over at a microscopic, fully quantum mechanical level, by nuclear probes (reactions) acting on a virtual particle of the zero point fluctuation (ZPF) of the nuclear vacuum in a similar irreversible, no-return, fashion as the event horizon does, letting the other particle, entangled with the first one, escape to infinity, and eventually be detected. With this proviso in mind one can posit that the reactions 1 H( 11 Be, 10 Be(2 + ;3.37 MeV)) 2 H and 1 H( 11 Li, 9 Li(1/2 − ; 2.69 MeV)) 3 H together with the associated γ−decay processes indicate a possible nuclear analogy of Hawking radiation.

Characterization of vorticity in pygmy resonances and soft-dipole modes with two-nucleon transfer reactions

“…Within this context it is of notice the remarkable prediction of parity inversion made in [46], and the detailed, profound analysis of the phenomenon presented in [47]. 11 In the case of 11 [38]). Similar information can be gathered by recording the γ−ray associated with the decay of the quadrupole mode of 9 Li in coincidence with the outgoing particle ( 9 Li), an experiment which remains to date of the gedanken type.…”

“…Bold wavy lines describe dressed vibrational modes whose properties (energy and electromagnetic transition probabilities) reproduce the experimental findings (renormalised NFT); (j) the connection between the diagrammatic processes and the Dirac (ket) representation (Eqs. (A.1)-(A.3)); (k) through the invasive, irreversible 1 H( 11 Li, 9 Li(1/2 − ; 2.769 MeV)) 3 H process populating the 1/2 − member of the (2 + ⊗ p 3/2 (π)) 1/2 − ,...7/2 − multiplet of 9 Li, evidence for the component |(s, d) 2 + × 2 + ; 0 + of | 0ν was obtained [11] (Fig 1, see also[38]). Similar information can be gathered by recording the γ−ray associated with the decay of the quadrupole mode of9 Li in coincidence with the outgoing particle ( 9 Li), an experiment which remains to date of the gedanken type.…”