Resonant nuclear transition in the dμ6Li muonic molecule

The reaction rate of the nuclear fusion d6Li→8Be*(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 that is analogous to the linear combination of atomic orbitals has been used. Using the complex coordinate rotation method, we found that a molecular d-μ-6Li state exists with energy (-20.3084-i0.0066) eV and |Ψm(0)|=0.4410-7 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 (ddα) to the five-body (NNNNα) problem. It was found that the reaction rate λ is strongly dependent on the energy gap between the d6Li threshold and the energy of the final 8Be* resonant state. The value of λ obtained by averaging over the width of this resonance is 0.183x1010 sec-1. copyright 1996 The American Physical Society