Simulating core excitation in breakup reactions of halo nuclei using an effective three-body force

TL;DR

This paper enhances the modeling of halo nucleus breakup reactions by incorporating an effective three-body force to account for core excitation, improving agreement with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces an effective three-body force in Halo EFT calculations to simulate core excitation effects in breakup reactions of halo nuclei.

Findings

Improved description of neutron-energy and angular spectra near the 11Be 5/2+ state.

Reasonable data fit for the 3/2+ 11Be state by tuning the three-body force.

Sensitivity of results to the range parameters of the three-body force.

Abstract

We extend our previous calculation of the breakup of 11Be using Halo Effective Field Theory and the Dynamical Eikonal Approximation to include an effective 10Be-n-target force. The force is constructed to account for the virtual excitation of 10Be to its low-lying 2+ excited state. In the case of breakup on a 12C target this improves the description of the neutron-energy and angular spectra, especially in the vicinity of the 11Be 5/2+ state. By fine-tuning the range parameters of the three-body force, a reasonable description of data in the region of the 3/2+ 11Be state can also be obtained. This sensitivity to the three-body force's range results from the structure of the overlap integral that governs the 11Be s-to-d-state transitions induced by the three-body force.