Quantitative study of coherent pairing modes with two neutron transfer: Sn-isotopes

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed theoretical and experimental analysis of two-neutron transfer reactions in Sn-isotopes, demonstrating that models combining BCS, QRPA, and optical potentials can accurately predict absolute cross sections.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive approach combining nuclear structure models and reaction calculations to accurately predict two-neutron transfer cross sections in Sn-isotopes.

Findings

Model predictions agree with experimental data within errors.

Coherent pairing modes behave almost classically, simplifying descriptions.

Parameter-free calculations successfully reproduce measured cross sections.

Abstract

Pairing rotations and pairing vibrations are collective modes associated with a field, the pair field, which changes the number of particles by two. Consequently, they can be studied at profit with the help of two-particle transfer reactions on superfluid and in normal nuclei, respectively. The advent of exotic beams has opened, for the first time, the possibility to carry out such studies in medium heavy nuclei, within the same isotopic chain. In the case studied in the present paper that of the Sn-isotopes (essentially from closed (Z=N=50) to closed (Z=50,N=82) shells). The static and dynamic off-diagonal, long range order phase coherence in gauge space displayed by pairing rotations and vibrations respectively, leads to coherent states which behave almost classically. Consequently, these modes are amenable to an accurate nuclear structure description in terms of simple models containing the right physics, in particular BCS plus QRPA and HF mean field plus RPA respectively. The associated two- nucleon transfer spectroscopic amplitudes predicted by such model calculations can thus be viewed as essentially "exact". This fact, together with the availability of optical potentials for the different real and virtual channels involved in the reactions considered, namely (A+2)Sn+p, (A+1)Sn+d and (A)Sn+t, allows for the calculation of the associated absolute cross sections without, arguably, free parameters. The numerical predictions of the absolute differential cross sections, obtained making use of the above mentioned nuclear structure and optical potential inputs, within the framework of second order DWBA, taking into account simultaneous, successive and non-orthogonality contributions provide, within experimental errors an overall account of the experimental findings for all of the measured (A+2)Sn(p,t)(A)Sn(gs) reactions, for which absolute cross sections have been reported to date.