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Ab initio study of the halo structure in $^{11}$Be

Shihang Shen, Serdar Elhatisari, Dean Lee, Ulf-G. Meißner, Zhengxue Ren

Abstract

We present an ab initio study of the one-neutron halo nucleus $^{11}$Be using nuclear lattice effective field theory with high-fidelity chiral interactions at N3LO. By employing the wavefunction matching method to mitigate the sign problem and the pinhole algorithm to sample many-body correlations, we successfully reproduce the ground-state parity inversion and the extended matter radius characteristic of the halo structure. We analyze the intrinsic density distributions and geometric shapes of $^{11}$Be in comparison with the core nucleus $^{10}$Be. Our results reveal a prominent two-cluster structure in both nuclei and the occupation of the $σ$ molecular orbital by the valence neutron in $^{11}$Be. It enhances the prolate deformation as well as the diffuse neutron tail, distinct from the $π$-orbital occupation observed in the $^{10}$Be ground state.

Ab initio study of the halo structure in $^{11}$Be

Abstract

We present an ab initio study of the one-neutron halo nucleus Be using nuclear lattice effective field theory with high-fidelity chiral interactions at N3LO. By employing the wavefunction matching method to mitigate the sign problem and the pinhole algorithm to sample many-body correlations, we successfully reproduce the ground-state parity inversion and the extended matter radius characteristic of the halo structure. We analyze the intrinsic density distributions and geometric shapes of Be in comparison with the core nucleus Be. Our results reveal a prominent two-cluster structure in both nuclei and the occupation of the molecular orbital by the valence neutron in Be. It enhances the prolate deformation as well as the diffuse neutron tail, distinct from the -orbital occupation observed in the Be ground state.
Paper Structure (4 sections, 3 equations, 4 figures, 1 table)

This paper contains 4 sections, 3 equations, 4 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Nuclear Lattice Effective Field Theory
  3. Results and discussion
  4. Conclusions and Perspectives

Figures (4)

  • Figure S1: Intrinsic 3D density distribution of (a) $^{10}$Be, (b) $^{11}$Be ground states and (c) their difference obtained by the pinhole algorithm.
  • Figure S2: Radial density distribution of $^{10}$Be and $^{11}$Be ground states obtained by NLEFT. (a) Total densities, (b) densities of the 2 clusters, and (c) densities of the valence neutrons. The dashed line in the inset indicates the asymptotic density distribution for $|E| = 1.9$ MeV, with the shadow band indicating the error propagated from the binding energy uncertainty.
  • Figure S3: Angular distribution of two clusters (cluster1-center-cluster2) in $^{10}$Be and $^{11}$Be ground states calculated by NLEFT.
  • Figure S4: Probability distribution of angle between nucleons and the $z$-axis in the $^{10}$Be and $^{11}$Be ground states calculated by NLEFT, in the $\alpha$-aligned frame of Fig. \ref{['fig1']}. (a) nucleons in clusters, (b) nucleons in valence neutrons. The gray dashed line indicates the expected angular distribution for a homogeneous sphere normalized to 1.