Behavior of the nuclear charge radii systematics in the s-d shell from muonic atom measurements.

Abstract

The present work extends the systematics of nuclear charge radii obtained by the method of muonic atoms to nuclei with 8\ensuremath{\le}Z,N\ensuremath{\le}20. The accuracy of the measured muonic Lyman transition energies of generally \ensuremath{\le}10 eV leads to a precision in the model-independent nuclear charge radii differences of 2--3 am for the isotope shifts and 4--9 am for isotone shifts. Both isotope and isotone shifts within the s-d shell behave ``anomalously'' with respect to the systematics of heavier nuclei. However, such behavior is predicted on theoretical grounds, if mixing in the s-d shells and the strong deformation of some of the nuclei in this region are considered. We compare charge radii from elastic electron scattering data with muonic atom rms radii and suggest that observed deviations are possibly due to incomplete dispersion corrections.