Three-Body Approach to Structural Properties of Halo Nuclei and the Efimov Effect

Abstract

In this chapter, we present a review of the work carried out during the last more than two decades to investigate the structural properties of neutron-rich halo nuclei within the framework of three-body model using separable interactions. The chapter may be broadly divided into two parts. The first part being mainly concerned with the study of structural properties of Borromean-type 2n-rich halo nuclei like 11Li where, in particular, sufficient experimental data, such as ground state energy, matter radius, momentum distribution and n–n correlation, excited states in 11Li above the breakup threshold and β-decay of 11Li into different channels, are available. The second part is devoted to the search for the occurrence of Efimov states in halo nuclei like 14Be, 19B, 22C and 20C. Specifically, in the case of 14Be nucleus, where we postulated the existence of low-lying virtual state of 2–4 keV in 13Be to predict the binding energy 14Be, the experimental evidence of this low-lying 13Be state was later confirmed by the Michigan group.