Phenomenological Criteria of Halo Nuclei in Ne Isotopes via Diffuseness and Helm-Model Approaches with Reaction Cross Sections

TL;DR

This study systematically identifies halo characteristics in neutron-rich Ne isotopes, especially 31Ne, using a combination of microscopic density analysis, phenomenological surface diffuseness, Helm-model form factors, and reaction cross sections.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework combining multiple approaches to quantitatively identify halo phenomena in medium-mass, deformed, neutron-rich nuclei.

Findings

31Ne shows a pronounced neutron extension and large surface diffuseness (~1.1 fm).

Helm-model analysis indicates deformation causes geometric smearing but does not fully explain the extended structure.

Reaction cross sections confirm the halo signature in 31Ne across different interaction models.

Abstract

We present a systematic study of halo characteristics in the neutron-rich isotopes 28-32Ne within the deformed relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov theory in continuum (DRHBc). Microscopic density distributions are analyzed in coordinate space, momentum space, and reaction observables to establish a quantitative and locally defined criterion for halo identification in medium-mass nuclei. The DRHBc densities reveal a pronounced neutron extension in 31Ne. A phenomenological analysis based on deformed Woods-Saxon fits shows a clear isotopic anomaly in the surface diffuseness parameter, with a value of about 1.1 fm for 31Ne, significantly larger than those of neighboring isotopes. The anomalously large diffuseness is therefore treated as the primary phenomenological halo signature, whereas the reduced fitted radius parameter is used only as a supporting consequence of the chosen normalization and tail-sensitive fit. Helm-model form-factor analysis demonstrates that deformation contributes to geometric smearing but does not fully account for the extended spatial structure, as reflected in the enhanced difference between microscopic and folded rms radii. Glauber reaction cross section calculations further confirm a robust relative enhancement of the interaction cross section for 31Ne that persists across reasonable nucleon-nucleon interaction prescriptions. These complementary analyses consistently identify 31Ne as the most prominent halo candidate within the 28-32Ne isotopic chain, while 32Ne exhibits intermediate features and 29Ne shows no clear halo signature. The present framework provides a practical and quantitative approach for identifying halo phenomena in deformed, neutron-rich nuclei beyond the light-mass region.