Physics Letters B (Jun 2019)

New high precision study on the decay width of the Hoyle state in 12C

  • T.K. Rana,
  • S. Bhattacharya,
  • C. Bhattacharya,
  • S. Manna,
  • Samir Kundu,
  • K. Banerjee,
  • R. Pandey,
  • Pratap Roy,
  • A. Dhal,
  • G. Mukherjee,
  • V. Srivastava,
  • A. Dey,
  • A. Chaudhuri,
  • T.K. Ghosh,
  • A. Sen,
  • Md.A. Asgar,
  • T. Roy,
  • J.K. Sahoo,
  • J.K. Meena,
  • A.K. Saha,
  • R.M. Saha,
  • M. Sinha,
  • Amit Roy

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 793
pp. 130 – 133

Abstract

Read online

Precise estimation of the rare direct 3α decay of the Hoyle state of 12C has been made to unveil its unusual α-cluster configurations ranging from linear 3α chain structure to diffuse Bose gas as well as Bose Einstein condensate. The present new high precision, nearly zero background experimental study with 1.6×105 Hoyle events has converged on the upper limit for direct decay at ∼0.019% with 95% confidence limit, which is more than a factor of 2 lower than the limit obtained in the previous studies. Keywords: 3α cluster state, 12C(α, α)3α reaction, Complete kinematics reaction, The Hoyle state decay, Direct versus sequential decay, Inelastic scattering