Study of two-neutron radioactivity in the decay of ²⁶O

Z. Kohley, T. Baumann, D. Bazin, G. Christian, P. A. DeYoung, J. E. Finck, N. Frank, M. Jones, E. Lunderberg, B. Luther, S. Mosby, T. Nagi, J. K. Smith, J. Snyder, A. Spyrou, and M. Thoennessen

Accepted Friday Mar 8, 2013

A new technique was developed to measure the lifetimes of neutron unbound nuclei in the picosecond range. The decay of 26O24O+n+n was examined as it had been predicted to have an appreciable lifetime due to the unique structure of the neutron-rich oxygen isotopes. The half-life of 26O was extracted as 4.5+1.1-1.5 (stat.)3 (sys.) ps. This corresponds to 26O having a finite lifetime at an 82% confidence level and, thus, suggests the possibility of two-neutron radioactivity.