Study of the structure of borromean nucleus ¹⁷Ne

Abstract: The ¹⁷Ne nucleus is a possible candidate with a two-proton borromean halo structure. Since the theoretical model is difficult to handle the three-body system, it is difficult to determine the two-proton halo structure in ¹⁷Ne. In the present research, we try to study the breakup reaction of ¹⁷Ne. For the Borromean nuclei, one-proton knockout results in an unstable nucleus which is decaying further by proton emission. This process will result in an angular correlation between the direction of the aligned recoiling unstable nucleus and its decay products. The angular correlations can give us information about the configuration of the valence proton in the ¹⁷Ne. Furthermore, theoretical calculations indicate that the momentum distributions of ¹⁶F c.m are sensitive to the structure of the halo in ¹⁷Ne. Thus the measurement of momentum distributions of ¹⁶F c.m may also give us conclusive information on the structure of ¹⁷Ne. The present experiment has been done at IMP in Lanzhou using the radioactive beam ¹⁷Ne at 30.8 MeV/u on a 43mg/cm^{2 12}C target. The data analysis is under procedure and the primary results are provided.