The nuclear electric polarizability of 6He

TL;DR

This paper estimates the nuclear electric polarizability of the 6He halo nucleus using microscopic six-body calculations, revealing a significantly smaller value than experimental estimates, indicating possible discrepancies between theory and experiment.

Contribution

It provides a new microscopic calculation of 6He polarizability using hyperspherical harmonics and sum rule methods, challenging previous experimental values.

Findings

Calculated polarizability is 1.00(14) fm^3, smaller than experimental 1.99(40) fm^3.

Highlights potential disagreement between microscopic theories and experimental data.

Uses advanced computational methods like the Lanczos algorithm and Lorentz integral transform.

Abstract

We present an estimate of the nuclear electric polarizability of the 6He halo nucleus based on six-body microscopic calculations. Wave functions are obtained from semi-realistic two-body interactions using the hyperspherical harmonics expansion method. The polarizability is calculated as a sum rule of the dipole response function using the Lanczos algorithm and also by integrating the photo-absorption cross section calculated via the Lorentz integral transform method. We obtain alpha_E=1.00(14) fm^3, which is much smaller than the published value 1.99(40) fm^3 extracted from experimental data. This points towards a potential disagreement between microscopic theories and experimental observations.