Lee Sobotka, Washington University
The 2p-2p decay of  8C and other 2p decay cases in light nuclei
Argonne Physics Division Seminar - 28 Sep 2010

Recent technical advances have allowed for high-order correlation experiments to be done. We have primarily focused on experiments in which the final channel is composed of only alphas and protons. Three cases we have studied are: 6Be, 10C and 8C via 3, 4, and 5-particle correlation experiments respectively. While the first case had been studied before, our work presents very high statistics in the full Jacobi coordinates (the coordinates needed to describe 3-body decay.) Our study of 10C provides an isolatable example of correlated 2p decay. Our most recent work, on 8C, presents the only case of sequential 3-body decay steps (i.e. 2p-2p.) The intermediate in this 2-step process is the first example (6Be) mentioned above. Unlike the well studied second step (the decay of 6Be), the first step in this 2p-2p process also provides an example of correlated 2p emission. In this experiment we also found the first case of 2p decay from an isobaric analog state, 8B(IAS) -> 6Li(IAS) +2p. This is a case for which 1p decay is energetically allowed but isospin forbidden. This represents an expansion, over that originally envisioned by Goldanski, of the conceivable nuclear territory for 2p decay.

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