DOI: 10.1140/epja/i2001-10237-5
Structure and reactions of halo nuclei: An entangled approach
J.S. Al-KhaliliDepartment of Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH, UK j.al-khalili@surrey.ac.uk
(Received: 21 March 2002 / Published online: 31 October 2002)
Abstract
Halo nuclei are characterised by their weak binding, large spatial
extent and hence a quite pronounced, yet highly correlated, few-body
structure. This is typically in terms of a well-defined core plus one
or more valence nucleons. Over the past decade the properties of halo
nuclei have been studied theoretically using a range of reaction
models, many of which having served us well for half a century or more
in the study of less exotic, "mean-field", nuclei. However, it is now
clear that for many reactions with halo nuclei, it is not appropriate
to disentangle (factorise out) the structure information from the
reaction information. That is, the few-body nature of these systems
requires few-body reaction models in which the nuclear structure and
reaction mechanisms are necessarily entangled. This talk will briefly
review the physical assumptions made by various reaction models, and
point to areas where progress is being made to extend their range of
applicability in order to provide further insights into halo
structure.
21.45.+v - Few-body systems.
24.10.-i - Nuclear reaction models and methods.
24.50.+g - Direct reactions.
25.10.+s - Nuclear reactions involving few-nucleon systems.
© Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2002
