Resonant nuclear transition in the dμ ⁶Li muonic molecule

The reaction rate of the nuclear fusion d ⁶Li→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 |Ψ_m(0)|=0.44 10^-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 d ⁶Li threshold and the energy of the final ⁸Be^* resonant state. The value of λ obtained by averaging over the width of this resonance is 0.183×10¹⁰ sec^-1. © 1996 The American Physical Society.