Linking Nuclear Reactions and Nuclear
Structure to Study Exotic Nuclei Using
the Dispersive Optical Model
W. H. Dickhoff
1 Introduction
How do the properties of protons and neutrons in the nucleus change from the valley
of stability to the respective drip lines? The answer can be developed by studying
the propagation of a nucleon through the nucleus at positive energy, generating
experimentally accessible elastic scattering cross sections, as well as the motion
of nucleons in the ground state at negative energy. The latter information sheds
light on the density distribution of both protons and neutrons relevant for clarifying
properties of neutron stars. Detailed knowledge of this propagation process allows
for an improved description of other hadronic reactions, including those that purport
to extract structure information, like transfer or knockout reactions. Structure
information associated with the removal of nucleons from the target nucleus is
therefore subject of these studies and must be supplemented by the appropriate
description of the hadronic reaction utilized to extract it. Consequently, establishing
a much tighter link between reaction and structure studies than is common practice
is an important goal of this research.
In our group we apply the Green’s functions method [1, 2] to the nuclear
many-body problem to address this issue with special emphasis on reaching the
limits of stability. The method can be utilized to correlate huge amounts of
experimental data, like elastic nucleon cross sections, analyzing powers, etc., as
well as structure information like removal energies, density distributions, and other
spectral properties. This is achieved by relating these data to the nucleon self-energy
employing its causal properties in the form of a subtracted dispersion relation. The
W. H. Dickhoff ()
Department of Physics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA
e-mail: wimd@physics.wustl.edu
https://web.physics.wustl.edu/wimd/
© This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection
in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply 2021
J. Escher et al. (eds.), Compound-Nuclear Reactions, Springer Proceedings in
Physics 254, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58082-7_10
83
Structure to Study Exotic Nuclei Using
the Dispersive Optical Model
W. H. Dickhoff
1 Introduction
How do the properties of protons and neutrons in the nucleus change from the valley
of stability to the respective drip lines? The answer can be developed by studying
the propagation of a nucleon through the nucleus at positive energy, generating
experimentally accessible elastic scattering cross sections, as well as the motion
of nucleons in the ground state at negative energy. The latter information sheds
light on the density distribution of both protons and neutrons relevant for clarifying
properties of neutron stars. Detailed knowledge of this propagation process allows
for an improved description of other hadronic reactions, including those that purport
to extract structure information, like transfer or knockout reactions. Structure
information associated with the removal of nucleons from the target nucleus is
therefore subject of these studies and must be supplemented by the appropriate
description of the hadronic reaction utilized to extract it. Consequently, establishing
a much tighter link between reaction and structure studies than is common practice
is an important goal of this research.
In our group we apply the Green’s functions method [1, 2] to the nuclear
many-body problem to address this issue with special emphasis on reaching the
limits of stability. The method can be utilized to correlate huge amounts of
experimental data, like elastic nucleon cross sections, analyzing powers, etc., as
well as structure information like removal energies, density distributions, and other
spectral properties. This is achieved by relating these data to the nucleon self-energy
employing its causal properties in the form of a subtracted dispersion relation. The
W. H. Dickhoff ()
Department of Physics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA
e-mail: wimd@physics.wustl.edu
https://web.physics.wustl.edu/wimd/
© This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection
in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply 2021
J. Escher et al. (eds.), Compound-Nuclear Reactions, Springer Proceedings in
Physics 254, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58082-7_10
83