Toward testing antinucleon$\unicode{x2013}$nucleus optical potentials with antineutron scattering lengths

Abstract

The antineutron$\unicode{x2013}$nucleus scattering length is currently known only indirectly, via antiproton$\unicode{x2013}$nucleus optical potentials fitted to level shifts and widths of antiprotonic atoms. The antineutron$\unicode{x2013}$nucleus and antiproton$\unicode{x2013}$nucleus potentials are related to each other through charge symmetry. We calculate the scattering length from optical potentials proposed for antiprotonic atoms using nucleon density distributions as input. We find that the scattering length for an $N>Z$ nuclide is largely affected by the poorly constrained neutron density distribution and by a possible isovector interaction, one of the mechanisms introduced to reproduce the isotope dependence of antiprotonic $^{40,48}\mathrm{Ca}$ data. For $^{48}\mathrm{Ca}$, the isovector term modifies the scattering length by $0.3\unicode{x2013}0.4\,\mathrm{fm}$ ($0.4\unicode{x2013}0.5\,\mathrm{fm}$) for the real (imaginary) part, an order of magnitude beyond the uncertainty propagated from the isoscalar potential. As no antineutron$\unicode{x2013}$nucleus scattering data are available below $76\,\mathrm{MeV}/c$, a direct measurement with recently proposed low-energy antineutron beams would provide the first access to the antinucleon$\unicode{x2013}$nucleus interaction in the $s$-wave regime.