Muon capture on neutron-rich nuclei

Future facilities will allow the exploration of extremely neutron-rich nuclei far from the valley of stability. It is discussed that the strong-neutron excess results in changes in the collective excitations of such nuclei compared to conventional stable nuclei. We propose muon capture as an experimental tool to explore such changes. We will quantify our discussion by the calculation of the total and differential muon capture rates on selected calcium isotopes between ⁴⁰Ca and ⁶⁰Ca. Our calculations are based on the random phase approximation and agree nicely with the measured rates for ⁴⁰Ca and ⁴⁴Ca. Received: 6 April 2001 / Accepted: 14 May 2001