Nonmesonic weak decay of Hypemuclei, The

Abstract

In single A hypernuclei, a A hyperon can occupy any orbital in the hypernucleus since it is free from the Pauli exclusion principle due to its additional quantum number strangeness. Due to the Pauli blocking effect, which suppresses the mesonic decay mode A ->N(pi) in the nuclear medium, hypernuclei larger than (5/A)He decay mainly through the nonmesonic channel, AN-> NN, where the A mass excess of 176 MeV is converted into kinetic energy of a final state of nucleons emerging above the Fermi see. This nonmesonic decay mode is assumed to proceed via the exchange of virtual mesons, and the large momentum transfer involved in the reaction leads to a mechanism that is sensitive to the short-distance behaviour of the amplitude and thus raises the possibility that the exchange of mesons heavier than the pion may play an important role. The fairly large momentum transfer also raises the hope that this reaction turns out to be insensitive to nuclear structure details and thus creates a suitable channel to investigate the weak decay mechanism.