Properties of the 7He ground state from 8He neutron knockout

Abstract

The unbound nucleus 7He, produced in neutron-knockout reactions with a 240 MeV/u 8He beam in a liquid-hydrogen target, has been studied in an experiment at the ALADIN-LAND setup at GSI. From an R-matrix analysis the resonance parameters for 7He as well as the spectroscopic factor for the 6He(0+) + n configuration in its ground-state have been obtained. The spectroscopic factor is 0.61 confirming that 7He is not a pure single-particle state. An analysis of 5He data from neutron-knockout reactions of 6He in a carbon target reveals the presence of an s-wave component at low energies in the α+n relative energy spectrum. A possible low-lying exited state in 7He observed in neutron knockout data from 8He in a carbon target and tentatively interpreted as a Iπ=1/2− state, could not be observed in the present experiment. Possible explanations of the shape difference between the 7He resonance obtained in the two knockout reactions are discussed in terms of target-dependence or different reaction mechanisms at relativistic energies.