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F. Nunes

Publications and source records attributed to F. Nunes.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

Perspectives on few-body cluster structures in exotic nuclei

It is a fascinating phenomenon in nuclear physics that states with a pronounced few-body structure can emerge from the complex dynamics of many nucleons. Such halo or cluster states often appear near the boundaries of nuclear stability. As such, they are an important part of the experimental program beginning at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB). A concerted effort of theory and experiment is necessary both to analyze experiments involving effective few-body states, as well as to constrain and refine theories of the nuclear force in light of new data from these experiments. As a contribution to exactly this effort, this paper compiles a collection of ``perspectives'' that emerged out of the Topical Program ``Few-body cluster structures in exotic nuclei and their role in FRIB experiments'' that was held at FRIB in August 2022 and brought together theorists and experimentalists working on this topic.

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Optical potential from first principles

We develop a method to construct a microscopic optical potential from chiral interactions for nucleon-nucleus scattering. The optical potential is constructed by combining the Green's function approach with the coupled-cluster method. To deal with the poles of the Green's function along the real energy axis we employ a Berggren basis in the complex energy plane combined with the Lanczos method. Using this approach, we perform a proof-of-principle calculation of the optical potential for the elastic neutron scattering on $^{16}{\rm O}$. For the computation of the ground-state of $^{16}{\rm O}$, we use the coupled-cluster method in the singles-and-doubles approximation, while for the $A=\pm 1$ nuclei we use particle-attached/removed equation-of-motion method truncated at two-particle-one-hole and one-particle-two-hole excitations, respectively. We verify the convergence of the optical potential and scattering phase shifts with respect to the model-space size and the number of discretized complex continuum states. We also investigate the absorptive component of the optical potential (which reflects the opening of inelastic channels) by computing its imaginary volume integral and find an almost negligible absorptive component at low-energies. To shed light on this result, we computed excited states of $^{16}{\rm O}$ using equation-of-motion coupled-cluster method with singles-and-doubles excitations and we found no low-lying excited states below 10~MeV. Furthermore, most excited states have a dominant two-particle-two-hole component, making higher-order particle-hole excitations necessary to achieve a precise description of these core-excited states. We conclude that the reduced absorption at low-energies can be attributed to the lack of correlations coming from the low-order cluster truncation in the employed coupled-cluster method.

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Scaling and Interference in the Dissociation of Halo Nuclei

The dissociation of halo nuclei through their collision with light and heavy targets is considered within the Continuum Discretized Coupled Channels theory. We study the one-proton halo nucleus $^8$B and the one-neutron halo nucleus $^{11}$Be, as well as the more normal $^7$Be. The procedure previously employed to extract the Coulomb dissociation cross section by subtracting the nuclear one is critically assessed, and the scaling law usually assumed for the target mass dependence of the nuclear breakup cross section is also tested. It is found that the nuclear breakup cross section for these very loosely bound nuclei does indeed behave as $a+bA^{1/3}$. However, it does not have the geometrically inspired form of a circular ring which seems to be the case for normal nuclei such as $^{7}$Be. We find further that we cannot ignore Coulomb-nuclear interference effects, which may be constructive or destructive in nature, and so the errors in previously extracted B(E1) using the subtraction procedure are almost certainly underestimated.

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Disentangling the transfer and breakup contributions from the inclusive 8Li+ 208Pb reaction

An analysis of the elastic and one-neutron removal channel for the reaction 8Li+208Pb reaction at energies around the Coulomb barrier is presented. For the elastic scattering, an optical model analysis of the experimental data is performed. The observed 7Li is interpreted as the superposition of the one-neutron transfer reaction, 208Pb(8Li,7Li)209Pb, and the breakup reaction. The separate contribution of each one of these processes has been calculated within the DWBA formalism. The sum of both contributions explains adequately the experimental angular distribution of 7Li.

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Continuum effects in reactions involving weakly bound nuclei

The relevance of the continuum effects in transfer reactions is discussed in conection with the determination of observables of astrophysical interest. In particular, we examine the validity of the Distorted Wave Born Approximation (DWBA) as a tool to extract the astrophysical \emph{(S_{17}(0))} factor. For this purpose, we present calculations for the reaction (^{14})N((^{7} )Be,(^{8})B)(^{13})C comparing the DWBA method with the more sophysticated CDCC-Born approximation

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(^{8})B breakup in elastic and transfer reactions

We have studied the transfer reaction $^{14}$N($^7$Be,$^8$B)$^{13}$C at (\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{lab}}=84) MeV, paying special attention to the effects of the coupling to the continuum in the exit channel. Using the Continuum Discretized Coupled Channels (CDCC) formalism, we find that these effects are important for the description of the elastic scattering observables. However, for the transfer process, differences between the predictions of the differential cross section within the Distorted Wave Born Approximation (DWBA) and the CDCC-Born approximation (CDCC-BA) are found to be negligible. This result supports the use of the DWBA method as a reliable tool to extract the $S_{17}(0)$ factor in this case.

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