The halo of the exotic nucleus 11Li: a single Cooper pair

If neutrons are progressively added to a normal nucleus, the Pauli principle forces them into states of higher momentum. When the core becomes neutron saturated, the nucleus expels most of the wave function of the last neutrons outside to form a halo, which, because of its large size, can have a lower momentum. It is an open question how nature stabilizes such a fragile system and provides the glue needed to bind the halo neutrons to the core. Here, we show that this problem is similar to that of the instability of the normal state of an electron system at zero temperature solved by Cooper, a solution which is at the basis of BCS theory of superconductivity. By mimicking this approach using, aside from the bare nucleon-nucleon interaction, the long wavelength vibrations of the nucleus ¹¹Li, the paradigm of halo nuclei, as tailored glues of the least bound neutrons, we are able to obtain a unified and quantitative picture of the observed properties of ¹¹Li. Received: 9 May 2001 / Accepted: 17 November 2001