Lifetime and Fragment Correlations for the Two-Neutron Decay of O-26 Ground State

Journal article, 2013

The structure and decay of O-26 are investigated in a three-body O-24 + n + n model suitable for studies of the long-lived (including radioactivity time scale) states. We have found extremely strong effects of the subbarrier configuration mixing on the decay width of true 2n emitters due to core recoil and neutron-neutron final state interaction. This effect far exceeds the analogous effect in the true 2p emitters. Our calculations provide reasonably narrow boundaries for the lifetime vs decay energy dependence for the true 2n emission. An upper limit of similar to 1 keV for the decay energy of the unbound O-26 is inferred based on the recent experimental lifetime value.