Insensitivity of the Coulomb breakup of halo nuclei to spectroscopic factors

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that Coulomb breakup cross sections of halo nuclei are insensitive to spectroscopic factors, emphasizing the importance of the asymptotic normalization coefficient in reaction analyses.

Contribution

The paper introduces a coupled-channel model that accounts for core excitation, showing that Coulomb breakup cross sections do not depend on spectroscopic factors when the asymptotic normalization coefficient is fixed.

Findings

Breakup cross sections are unaffected by spectroscopic factor variations.

Core excitation effects are incorporated in the model.

Coulomb breakup is primarily sensitive to the asymptotic normalization coefficient.

Abstract

Exotic nuclear structures such as halos are mostly studied using reactions. In Coulomb breakup, the radioactive projectile dissociates through its interaction with a heavy target. Often, a spectroscopic factor for the core-halo structure is inferred from experimental data. In this work, we present a new calculation of the Coulomb breakup of the one-neutron halo nucleus $^{11}$Be performed with a coupled-channel effective particle-rotor model of that nucleus, which accounts for the excitation of the $^{10}$Be core. Changes in the spectroscopic factor have no effect on the cross sections when the asymptotic normalisation coefficient is fixed, hence confirming the insensitivity of Coulomb-breakup cross sections to spectroscopic factors.