Description of charge radii in halo nuclei within the Gamow shell model

International audienceThe charge radius of the halo nucleus 6He is studied within the framework of the Gamow Shell Model (GSM). The charge radius carries information about the size of the neutron halo, the recoil of the core, and the effective interaction between valence nucleons. The motivation for this work stems from the precise measurements of charge radii in 6,8He, 11Li, and 11Be. For these weakly bound nuclei, the proper treatment of the particle continuum turns out to be crucial. The GSM is a tool that can properly account for the coupling of the continuum space (of both resonant and scattering character) with that of the bound states. We use a GSM Hamiltonian written explicitly in intrinsic coordinates. This guarantees that the core recoil effect is properly described and the spurious center-of-mass motion is removed. According to our calculations for 6He, the charge radius is very sensitive to (i) the halo extent given by the two-neutron separation energy of the system, and (ii) the p3/2 occupation. In particular, we show that the two-body wave function of halo neutrons in 6He should contain ~91% of a p3/2 partial wave to reproduce the charge radius. This observation will help us to construct a GSM effective interaction on the interface of p and sd shells that is needed to describe other halo systems