Luneburg-lens-like universal structural Pauli attraction in nucleus-nucleus interactions: origin of emergence of cluster structures and nuclear rainbows

Abstract

The Pauli exclusion principle plays an important role in many-body fermion systems preventing them from collapsing by repulsion. For example, the Pauli principle causes a repulsive potential at short distances between two $\alpha$ particles. On the other hand, the existence of nuclear rainbows demonstrates that the inter-nuclear potential is sufficiently attractive in the internal region to cause refraction. The two concepts of repulsion and attraction are seemingly irreconcilable. Contrary to traditional understanding, it is shown that the Pauli principle causes a {\it universal structural Pauli attraction} between nuclei rather than a {\it structural repulsive core}. Through systematic studies of $\alpha$+$\alpha$, $\alpha$+${}^{16}$O, $\alpha$+${}^{40}$Ca and ${}^{16}$O+${}^{16}$O systems, it is shown that the emergence of cluster structures near the threshold energy at low energies and nuclear rainbows at high energies is a direct consequence of the Pauli principle.

6 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Nuclear rainbow scattering and nucleus-nucleus potential
• Toward an understanding of short distance repulsions among baryons in QCD -- NBS wave functions and operator product expansion --

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Supersolidity of the $\alpha$ cluster structure in the nucleus ${}^{12}$C
• Existence of higher nodal band states with $\alpha$+${}^{48}$Ca cluster structure in ${}^{52}$Ti
• Cross sections at sub-Coulomb energies: full optical model vs.\ barrier transmission for ${}^{40}$Ca + $\alpha$
• Luneburg-lens-like structural Pauli attractive core of nuclear force at short distances
• Evidence of a higher nodal band $\alpha$+${}^{44}$Ca cluster state in fusion reactions and $\alpha$ clustering in ${}^{48}$Ti
• Supersolidity of $\alpha$ cluster structure in ${}^{40}$Ca
• Secondary bow with ripples in ${}^{12}$C+${}^{12}$C rainbow scattering
• Farside-dominant quasinuclear rainbow in refractive $\alpha$+$\alpha$ scattering
• Systematics of supernumerary nuclear rainbow in inelastic ${}^{16}$O+${}^{12}$C scattering