Structural Properties of the A=8 and A=9 nuclear isomultiplet nuclei in Fermionic Molecular Dynamics

• Main Author: Henninger, Katharine
• Format: Others
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/5299/1/Thesis-Henninger.pdf; Henninger, Katharine <http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/view/person/Henninger=3AKatharine=3A=3A.html> (2016): Structural Properties of the A=8 and A=9 nuclear isomultiplet nuclei in Fermionic Molecular Dynamics.Darmstadt, Technische Universität, [Ph.D. Thesis]

Weakly bound nuclei act as intermediates in the nucleosynthesis of stable nuclei. For this reason, theoretical models of weakly bound nuclear matter have many applications in astrophysics. This thesis concerns itself with the weakly bound nuclei of the A = 8 isotriplet and A = 9 isodoublet, which play a role in astrophysical reactions. The ground states of weakly-bound nuclei are often close to a decomposition threshold. This means that clustering and sometimes halos are observed in the ground state or in low-lying states of weakly bound nuclei. Such structures difficult to model, because it is difficult to gain access to spatially extended or anisotropic distributions without large model spaces. The aim of this work is to model the ground state and the excited states of the A = 8 isotriplet nuclei (8Li, 8Be and 8B) and the A = 9 isodoublet nuclei (9Be and 9B) in the Fermionic molecular dynamics (FMD) model. Our calculations reproduce the proton halo of 8B and the clustering in the ground states of the A = 8,9 isotopes. The observable properties such as radii, quadrupole moments and transition strengths we determine for all six nuclides compare favourably with experiment and with current theory. The question of ``mirror nuclides'' in the weakly-bound sector was also addressed in light of the influence of thresholds and structural phenomena on Coulomb energy. It was found that the Coulomb energy is the primary lifter of the degeneracy of the energy of mirror nuclei, and that subtraction of a Coulomb energy calculated from structure can restore this degeneracy.