Study of the Structure of Borromean Nucleus 17Ne

In the present research, we used the 17Ne beam at 30.8 MeV/u to bombard the 43 mg/cm212C target and measured the angular correlations between the fragments and emitted proton. In the break-up reaction of 17Ne, one-proton knockout would result in an unstable nucleus 16F, which would further decay by the proton emission. The measured angular correlation between the 16F momentum and the relative momentum of its decay products was compared with theoretical calculations and indicated that the valence proton in 17Ne has the most probability to be situated in the s1/2 orbital with a small admixture of the d5/2 orbital. The present results suggest that 17Ne has a halo structure.