Excitation of the isoscalar giant monopole resonance using 6Li inelastic scattering

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that 6Li inelastic scattering can effectively probe the isoscalar giant monopole resonance in various nuclei, providing a viable alternative to traditional alpha-particle scattering methods for studying nuclear incompressibility.

Contribution

The paper introduces the use of 6Li inelastic scattering as a new method to investigate the ISGMR, showing its consistency with established alpha-particle scattering results.

Findings

6Li inelastic scattering yields ISGMR strength distributions consistent with alpha scattering.

Feasibility of using 6Li as a probe for nuclear incompressibility.

Supports alternative experimental approaches for nuclear matter studies.

Abstract

The incompressibility of infinite nuclear matter (K_\infty) is a parameter in the description of the nuclear equation of state that governs the energy cost associated with density oscillations near the saturation density. The most direct experimental method for studying this property of infinite nuclear matter is to probe the isoscalar giant monopole resonance (ISGMR) in finite nuclei. This work explores the use of 6Li as a probe to study the ISGMR in several stable nuclei: 58Ni, 90Zr, 116Sn, and 208Pb, as complementary to using inelastic scattering of {\alpha}-particles, which has been used to great effect over the last several decades. Elastic and inelastic scattering data for these targets were collected with 343-MeV 6Li beams. In all nuclei studied in this work, the ISGMR strength distributions extracted from multipole decomposition analyses of the inelastic scattering spectra agree very well with the previously measured ISGMR responses from {\alpha}-particle scattering, establishing the feasibility of employing 6Li inelastic scattering in investigations of the ISGMR.