Resonant nuclear transition in the d-mu-Li6 muonic molecule

Abstract

The reaction rate of the nuclear fusion d+Li6 ----> Be8*(2+,0) is estimated in the case where the nuclei are confined to each other by a muon. For the description of nuclear transitions, a method which is analogous to the Linear Combination of Atomic Orbitals has been used. Using the complex coordinate rotation method, we found that a molecular d-mu-Li6 state exists with energy (-20.3084-i0.0066) eV and |\Psi_{m}(0)|=0.44x10^{-7} fm^-3/2. The nuclear wave functions needed, were constructed in the form of antisymmetrized products of harmonic-oscillator functions for the three-cluster approximation, (dd\alpha), to the five-body (NNNN\alpha) problem. It was found that the reaction rate \lambda is strongly dependent on the energy gap between the d-Li6 threshold and the energy of the final Be8^* resonant state. The value of \lambda obtained by averaging over the width of this resonance, is 0.183x10^10 sec^{-1}.