Direct reactions using few-body models

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Today nuclear physicists are able to produce short-lived exotic nuclei with very abnormal neutron and proton combinations by using dedicated, laboratory-based accelerators. It is a scientific challenge both to calculate and measure their novel properties, structures and stability. Testing and improving our knowledge and the accuracy of the theoretical predictions for these completely new nuclei is a long term goal to which this research project will contribute. Many exotic nuclei are rather weakly bound and can thus be accurately modelled as two-, three- or four- interacting particles. These particles can be individual nucleons or bound clusters of nucleons. Such dynamical models are referred to as few-body models. The proposed research brings together nuclear reactions and few-body nuclear structure model experts to continue ongoing research, including that of research students, in three areas. These are (a) to examine the description of resonances in three-body structures, and the way they then decay, by comparing the theoretical three-body hyperspherical scattering and R(reaction)-matrix methods, (b) to extend the mathematical and computational methods for calculations of bound three-body systems to allow calculations four-body systems, and (c) to develop the theory of the (p,2p) nucleon-knockout reaction to understand future expeiments. These reactions, in which a proton is removed from a nucleus, allows the quantum mechanical state of the removed nucleon to be probed, and hence brings information of the structure of the original nucleus.