Femtometer toroidal structures in nuclei

Mar, 1996
35 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.C 54 (1996) 646-667
e-Print:
Report number:
  • ILL-P-96-03-022,
  • CEBAF-TH-96-03

Citations per year

1997200420112018202402468101214
Abstract:
The two-nucleon density distributions in states with isospin T=0T=0, spin SS=1 and projection MSM_S=0 and ±\pm1 are studied in  2~2H,  3,4~{3,4}He,  6,7~{6,7}Li and  16~{16}O. The equidensity surfaces for MSM_S=0 distributions are found to be toroidal in shape, while those of MSM_S=±\pm1 have dumbbell shapes at large density. The dumbbell shapes are generated by rotating tori. The toroidal shapes indicate that the tensor correlations have near maximal strength at r<2r<2 fm in all these nuclei. They provide new insights and simple explanations of the structure and electromagnetic form factors of the deuteron, the quasi-deuteron model, and the dpdp, dddd and αd\alpha d LL=2 (DD-wave) components in  3~3He,  4~4He and  6~6Li. The toroidal distribution has a maximum-density diameter of \sim1 fm and a half-maximum density thickness of \sim0.9 fm. Many realistic models of nuclear forces predict these values, which are supported by the observed electromagnetic form factors of the deuteron, and also predicted by classical Skyrme effective Lagrangians, related to QCD in the limit of infinite colors. Due to the rather small size of this structure, it could have a revealing relation to certain aspects of QCD.