Impact of uncertainties of unbound $^{10}$Li on the ground state of two-neutron halo $^{11}$Li

TL;DR

This paper investigates how uncertainties in the unbound $^{10}$Li spectrum affect the structure of the two-neutron halo nucleus $^{11}$Li, using a three-body model that accounts for continuum states.

Contribution

It introduces a three-body model that explicitly couples continuum states to study the impact of $^{10}$Li spectrum ambiguities on $^{11}$Li's ground state configuration.

Findings

Configuration mixing varies with different $^{9}$Li+n potentials.

Two-neutron correlations are analyzed under spectrum uncertainties.

The model highlights the sensitivity of $^{11}$Li structure to $^{10}$Li continuum ambiguities.

Abstract

Recently, the energy spectrum of $^{10}$Li was measured upto 4.6 MeV, via one-neutron transfer reaction d($^{9}$Li, p)$^{10}$Li. Considering the ambiguities on the $^{10}$Li continuum spectrum with reference to new data, we report the configuration mixing in the ground state of the two-neutron halo nucleus $^{11}$Li for two different choices of the $^{9}$Li$+$n potential. For the present study, we employ a three-body (core$+$n$+$n) structure model developed for describing the two-neutron halo system by explicit coupling of unbound continuum states of the subsystem (core$+$n), and discuss the two-neutron correlations in the ground state of $^{11}$Li.