Selective decay from a candidate of the $σ$-bond linear-chain state in $^{14}$C

nucl-ex

/ Authors

J. Li, Y. L. Ye, Z. H. Li, C. J. Lin, Q. T. Li, Y. C. Ge, J. L. Lou, Z. Y. Tian, W. Jiang, Z. H. Yang

and 16 more authors

J. Feng, P. J. Li, J. Chen, Q. Liu, H. L. Zang, B. Yang, Y. Zhang, Z. Q. Chen, Y. Liu, X. H. Sun, J. Ma, H. M. Jia, X. X. Xu, L. Yang, N. R. Ma, L. J. Sun

/ Abstract

A cluster-transfer experiment $^9$Be($^9$Be,$^{14}$C$^*\rightarrowα$+$^{10}$Be)$α$ was carried out using an incident beam energy of 45 MeV. This reaction channel has a large $Q$-value that favors populating the high-lying states in $^{14}$C and separating various reaction channels. A number of resonant states are reconstructed from the forward emitting $^{10}$Be + $α$ fragments with respect to three sets of well discriminated final states in $^{10}$Be, most of which agree with the previous observations. A state at 22.5(1) MeV in $^{14}$C is found to decay predominantly into the states around 6 MeV in $^{10}$Be daughter nucleus, in line with the unique property of the predicted band head of the $σ$-bond linear-chain molecular states. A new state at 23.5(1) MeV is identified which decays strongly into the first excited state of $^{10}$Be.