Binding two and three $\alpha$ particles in cold neutron matter

Abstract

We elucidate the fate of neighboring two and three-$\alpha$ particles in cold neutron matter by focusing on an analogy between such $\alpha$ systems and Fermi polarons realized in ultracold atoms. We describe in-medium excitation properties of an $\alpha$ particle and neutron-mediated two- and three-$\alpha$ interactions using theoretical approaches developed for studies of cold atomic systems. We numerically solve the few-body Schrödinger equation of $\alpha$ particles within standard $\alpha$ cluster models combined with in-medium properties of $\alpha$ particles. We point out that the resultant two-$\alpha$ ground state and three-$\alpha$ first excited state, which correspond to ${}^8$Be and the Hoyle state, respectively, known as main components in the triple-$\alpha$ reaction, can become bound states in such a many-neutron background although these states are unstable in vacuum. Our results suggest a significance of these in-medium cluster states not only in astrophysical environments such as core-collapsed supernova explosions and neutron star mergers but also in neutron-rich nuclei.

9 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (17)

• GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
• Observation of Fermi Polarons in a Tunable Fermi Liquid of Ultracold Atoms
• Repulsive Fermi polarons in a resonant mixture of ultracold ${}^6$Li atoms
• Ultra-cold Polarized Fermi Gases
• Alpha-particle condensation in 16O via a full four-body OCM calculation
• Light nuclei quasiparticle energy shift in hot and dense nuclear matter
• Global-Vector Representation of the Angular Motion of Few-Particle Systems II
• Stability and breakdown of Fermi polarons in a strongly interacting Fermi-Bose mixture
• Inversion doublets of 3N+N cluster structure in excited states of ${}^4$He
• Investigation of ${}^9$Be from nonlocalized clustering concept
• Casimir interaction among heavy fermions in the BCS-BEC crossover
• Polaron Problems in Ultracold Atoms: Role of a Fermi Sea across Different Spatial Dimensions and Quantum Fluctuations of a Bose Medium
• Proton radii of Be, B, and C isotopes
• Light $p$-shell nuclei with cluster structures ($4\le A\le 16$) in nuclear matter
• Induced p-wave superfluidity in strongly interacting imbalanced Fermi gases
• Ultracold Bose Mixtures with Spin-Dependent Fermion-Mediated Interactions
• Three-$\alpha$ configurations in the $0^{+}$ states of ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Cooper quartet correlations in infinite symmetric nuclear matter
• Intersections of ultracold atomic polarons and nuclear clusters: How is a chart of nuclides modified in dilute neutron matter?
• Medium-induced bosonic clusters in a Bose-Fermi mixture: Towards simulating cluster formations in neutron-rich matter
• Polaronic Proton and Diproton Clustering in Neutron-Rich Matter
• Three-$\alpha$ configurations of the second $J^{\pi }=2^{+}$ state in ${}^{12}$C
• Resonance-to-bound transition of ${}^5$He in neutron matter and its analogy with heteronuclear Feshbach molecule
• Quartet correlations near the surface of $N=Z$ nuclei
• Mass-Energy Equivalence in Bound Three-Nucleon Systems
• Polaronic neutron in dilute alpha matter: A $p$-wave Bose polaron
• Tunable Fujita-Miyazawa-Type Three-Body Force in Ultracold Atoms
• When does a Fermi puddle become a Fermi sea? Emergence of pairing in two-dimensional trapped mesoscopic Fermi gases
• Structure of two- and three-alpha systems in cold neutron matter