Further limit on 3α decay of Hoyle state

Abstract

The quantitative contributions of various direct three alpha decay mechanisms in the decay of the famous Hoyle state, the 02+ resonant excited state of 12C at excitation energy of 7.65 MeV, has been estimated using 60 MeV α inelastic scattering on 12C target in complete kinematical measurement. Simultaneous optimisation of three different distributions (the relative energy of 8Be like pairs, the root mean square energy deviation and the radial projection of symmetric Dalitz plot) derived from the experimental data with those generated from the Monte Carlo simulated event sets, have been done to arrive at a consistent estimation of the contributions of various direct decay modes.