Core-excitation effects in three-body breakup reactions studied using the Faddeev formalism

Background: Previous studies of (d, p) reactions in three-body (proton, neutron, nuclear core) systems revealed a nontrivial effect of the core excitation: the transfer cross section cannot be factorized into the spectroscopic factor and the single-particle cross section obtained neglecting the core excitation. This observable, up to a kinematic factor, is the angular distribution of the core nucleus in the (p, d) reaction. Purpose: The study of the core excitation effect for the most closely related observable in the (p, pn) three-body breakup, i.e., the core angular distribution, is the aim in the present work. Methods: Breakup of the one-neutron halo nucleus in the collision with the proton is described using three-body Faddeev-type equations extended to include the excitation of the nuclear core. The integral equations for transition operators are solved in the momentum-space partial-wave representation. Results: Breakup of Be-11 nucleus as well as of model A = 11 p-wave nuclei is studied at beam energies of 30, 60, and 200 MeV per nucleon. Angular and momentum distributions for the Be-10 core in ground and excited states is calculated. In sharp contrast to (p, d) reactions, the differential cross section in most cases factorizes quite well into the spectroscopic factor and the single-particle cross section. Conclusions: Due to different reaction mechanisms the core excitation effect in the breakup is very different from transfer reactions. A commonly accepted approach to evaluate the cross section, i.e., the rescaling of single-particle model results by the corresponding spectroscopic factor, appears to be reliable for breakup though it fails in general for transfer reactions.