Evidence against the Efimov effect in <sup>12</sup>C from spectroscopy and astrophysics
ORAL
Abstract
The Efimov effect is a universal phenomenon in physics whereby three-body systems are stabilized via the interaction of unbound two-body sub-systems. A hypothetical state in 12C at 7.458 MeV excitation energy, comprising of a loose structure of three α-particles in mutual two-body resonances, has been suggested to correspond to an Efimov state in nuclear physics. Using the combined data sets from two recent experiments, one with the TexAT TPC to measure α-decay and the other with Gammasphere to measure γ-decay of states in 12C populated by 12N and 12B β-decay respectively, we achieve high sensitivity to states in close-proximity to the α-threshold in 12C. In parallel, calculations of the triple-alpha reaction rate show the inclusion of the Efimov state corresponds to a large increase in the reaction rate around 5×107 K. This talk will summarize these results and demonstrate the remarkable sensitivity achieved in this combined approach.
*This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Science, under award no. DE-FG02-93ER40773 and by National Nuclear Security Administration through the Center for Excellence in Nuclear Training and University Based Research (CENTAUR) under grant number DE-NA0003841.
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Publication: J. Bishop et al. Phys. Rev. C 103, L051303 (2021)
Presenters
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Jack E Bishop
- Texas A&M University