Electric dipole response of $^6$He: Halo-neutron and core excitations

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed microscopic study of the electric dipole response of helium-6, revealing features of giant resonance and soft dipole modes through advanced six-body calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a fully microscopic six-body calculation method using correlated Gaussians, explicitly including three-body decay channels for accurate $E1$ response analysis.

Findings

Identification of main peaks in $E1$ strength function.

Observation of giant dipole resonance and soft-dipole mode.

Consistent reproduction of experimental ground state properties.

Abstract

Electric dipole ($E1$) response of $^{6}$He is studied with a fully microscopic six-body calculation. The wave functions for the ground and excited states are expressed as a superposition of explicitly correlated Gaussians (CG). Final state interactions of three-body decay channels are explicitly taken into account. The ground state properties and the low-energy $E1$ strength are obtained consistently with observations. Two main peaks as well as several small peaks are found in the $E1$ strength function. The peak at the high-energy region indicates a typical macroscopic picture of the giant dipole resonance, the out-of-phase proton-neutron motion. The transition densities of the lower-lying peaks exhibit in-phase proton-neutron motion in the internal region, out-of-phase motion near the surface region, and spatially extended neutron oscillation, indicating a soft-dipole mode (SDM) and its vibrationally excited mode.