This review paper concerns the research devoted to the study of the properties of dipole excitations in nuclei. The main focus is on questions related to isospin effects in these types of ...excitations. Particular attention is given to the experimental and theoretical efforts made to understand the nature and the specific structure of the low-lying dipole states known as the Pygmy Dipole Resonance (PDR). The main experimental methods employed in the study of the PDR are reviewed as well as the most interesting theoretical aspects. The main features of the experiments and of theoretical models are reported with special emphasis on the reaction cross sections populating the dipole states. Results are organized for nuclei according to different mass regions. The knowledge of the isovector dipole response as well as its low energy part is important in order to deduce the nuclear polarizability as accurate as possible. This issue is discussed in this paper together with the connection with the neutron skin and the nuclear equation of state. The important role played by the dipole response to deduce other physical quantities of general interest is discussed in the last two chapters. One concerns the level density and the other the isospin mixing in nuclei at finite temperature and its relation with beta decay.
“Background-free” spectra of inelastic α-particle scattering have been measured at a beam energy of 385 MeV in 90,92Zr and 92Mo at extremely forward angles, including 0°. The ISGMR strength ...distributions for the three nuclei coincide with each other, establishing clearly that nuclear incompressibility is not influenced by nuclear shell structure near A∼90 as was claimed in recent measurements.
.
Physical studies of electric dipole excitations in atomic nuclei
e.g.
the structure of pygmy dipole resonances and isovector giant dipole resonances are attracting much attention recently. In this ...article, we describe a technical development in the coincidence measurement of the excitation processes with the Grand Raiden high-resolution magnetic spectrometer and the
γ
-decay processes by the CAGRA and SC
γ
LLA efficient
γ
-detector arrays at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics at Osaka University. Specifically, we describe how we developed a new beamline (GRAF), for
γ
detection at the target position by placing the spectrometer at an angle of
4
.
5
-
19
.
0
∘
and by transporting the primary beam to a well-shielded beam dump. Experimental conditions and representative data are shown for each of the two
γ
-detector arrays.
The dipole polarizability of stable even-mass tin isotopes 112,114,116,118,120,124Sn was extracted from inelastic proton scattering experiments at 295MeV under very forward angles performed at RCNP. ...Predictions from energy density functionals cannot account for the present data and the polarizability of 208Pb simultaneously. The evolution of the polarizabilities in neighboring isotopes indicates a kink at 120Sn while all model results show a nearly linear increase with mass number after inclusion of pairing corrections.
The fine structure of the IsoVector Giant Dipole Resonance (IVGDR) in the doubly-magic nuclei 40,48Ca observed in inelastic proton scattering experiments under 0∘ is used to investigate the role of ...different mechanisms contributing to the IVGDR decay width. Characteristic energy scales are extracted from the fine structure by means of wavelet analysis. The experimental scales are compared to different theoretical approaches allowing for the inclusion of complex configurations beyond the mean-field level. Calculations are performed in the framework of RPA and beyond-RPA in a relativistic approach based on an effective meson-exchange interaction, with the UCOM effective interaction and, for the first time, with realistic two- plus three-nucleon interactions from chiral effective field theory employing the in-medium similarity renormalization group. All models highlight the role of Landau fragmentation for the damping of the IVGDR, while the differences in the coupling strength between one particle-one hole (1p-1h) and two particle-two hole (2p-2h) correlated (relativistic) and non-correlated (non-relativistic) configurations lead to very different pictures of the importance of the spreading width resulting in wavelet scales being a sensitive measure of their interplay. The relativistic approach with particle-vibration coupling, in particular, shows impressive agreement with the number and absolute values of the scales extracted from the experimental data.
Proton inelastic scattering experiments at energy Ep=200 MeV and a spectrometer scattering angle of 0° were performed on 144,146,148,150Nd and 152Sm exciting the IsoVector Giant Dipole Resonance ...(IVGDR). Comparison with results from photo-absorption experiments reveals a shift of resonance maxima towards higher energies for vibrational and transitional nuclei. The extracted photo-absorption cross sections in the most deformed nuclei, 150Nd and 152Sm, exhibit a pronounced asymmetry rather than a distinct double-hump structure expected as a signature of K-splitting. This behaviour may be related to the proximity of these nuclei to the critical point of the phase shape transition from vibrators to rotors with a soft quadrupole deformation potential. Self-consistent random-phase approximation (RPA) calculations using the SLy6 Skyrme force provide a relevant description of the IVGDR shapes deduced from the present data.
We conducted the coincidence measurement of α particles inelastically scattered from 20Ne at 0° and decay charged particles in order to search for the alpha-particle condensed state. We compared the ...measured excitation-energy spectrum and decay branching ratio with the statistical-decay-model calculations, and found that the newly observed states at Ex=23.6, 21.8, and 21.2 MeV in 20Ne are strongly coupled to a candidate for the 4α condensed state in 16O. This result presents the first strong evidence that these states are the candidates for the 5α condensed state.
The triple alpha reaction is one of the most important reactions in the nuclear astrophysics. However, its reaction rate in high temperature environments at T9> 2 was still uncertain. One of the ...major origins of the uncertainty was that the radiative-decay probability of the 31− state in 12C was unknown. In the present work, we have determined the radiative-decay probability of the 31− state to be 1.3−1.1+1.2×10−6 by measuring the 1H(12C,12Cp) reaction for the first time, and derived the triple alpha reaction rate in high temperature environments from the measured radiative-decay probability. The present result suggests that the 31− state noticeably enhances the triple alpha reaction rate although the contribution from the 31− state had been assumed to be small.
The angular distribution of 12C + 12C scattering at an incident energy of 100A MeV has been measured. The elastic and inelastic scatterings in 12C to the excitation energies of up to ∼45 MeV were ...measured simultaneously for the first time with the high-resolution Grand Raiden spectrometer at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP). The angular distributions of the elastic scattering to the ground state (01+) and inelastic scattering to the 4.44 MeV (21+) excited state were precisely obtained in the angular range of 1.0°–7.5° with a step of 0.1°. Additionally, the angular distribution was obtained for the sum of the cross sections for excitation energies above the 4.44 MeV state up to 11 MeV, which includes the 7.65 MeV (02+), 9.64 MeV (31−), and 10.30 MeV (22+) states, in addition to probably the simultaneous excitation of the 4.44 MeV state in the projectile and the target nuclei. Those combined data provide a means to study the effects of channel coupling on the elastic cross section. The observed angular distributions are compared with theoretical calculations based on three double-folding models with complex G-matrix interactions, the CEG07b, MPa, and ESC models. The importance of three-body repulsive forces included in the CEG07b and MPa models will be discussed.