Structure of mirror pairs 8Li-8B and 9Be-9B in Fermionic Molecular Dynamics

Abstract

Structure of light weakly-bound nuclei like 8B or 9Be is of astrophysical interest. Microscopic models of their structure face challenges, since these nuclei feature clusters; difficult to access using a basis of spatially-isotropic single-particle states. The Fermionic Molecular Dynamics (FMD) model offers a basis general enough to describe both compact (shell model like) states and clustering. We discuss FMD calculations for the mirror pairs 8B-8Li and 9Be-9B. These are interesting because one nucleus of each pair is weakly-bound or unbound. It is shown that the FMD calculations reproduce energy levels and radii fairly, and that subtraction of the Coulomb energy calculated from the FMD states restores degeneracy of the mirror levels within at most ∼ 100 keV.