Charge, neutron, and weak size of the atomic nucleus

By Gaute Hagen, A. Ekstrom, C. Forss'en, G. Jansen, Witold Nazarewicz, Thomas Papenbrock, K. Wendt, S. Bacca, N. Barnea, B. Carlsson and 7 more. 2015

138 citations recorded by the source corpus.

What is the size of the atomic nucleus? This deceivably simple question is difficult to answer. While the electric charge distributions in atomic nuclei were measured accurately already half a century ago, our knowledge of the distribution of neutrons is still deficient. In addition to constraining the size of atomic nuclei, the neutron distribution also impacts the number of nuclei that can exist and the size of neutron stars. We present an ab initio calculation of the neutron distribution of the neutron-rich nucleus 48 Ca. We show that the neutron skin (difference between radii of neutron and proton distributions) is significantly smaller than previously thought. We also make predictions for the electric dipole polarizability and the weak form factor; both quantities are currently targeted by precision measurements. Based on ab initio results for 48 Ca, we provide a constraint on the size of a neutron star.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5e9409eae0eb486499f4c425a0f41670414460ce