Efimov effect and three-body decay

Abstract

The Efimov effect is discussed by use of hyperspherical coordinates and adiabatic potentials. The energy and size scalings are very sensitive to the two independent mass ratios. Two large and one small mass provide the smallest energy spacing. It is less important whether two or three scattering lengths are large. Energy distributions arising from three-body decays are computed for one resonance in 12C and for the predicted 11Li 1−-resonance. The decaying 11Li three-body system with three large s-wave scattering lengths exhibits characteristic peaks in the energy distribution. This may be considered as a signature of the Efimov effect in similar nuclear three-body decays.