Interaction of the eta-meson with light nuclei

Abstract

The long-standing problem of possible formation of metastable states in collisions of the eta-meson with atomic nuclei is revisited. The two-body eta-nucleon interaction is described by a local potential, which is constructed by fitting known low-energy parameters of this interaction. The many-body eta-nucleus potential obtained within the folding model, is used to search for metastable states of the systems formed by the eta-meson with hydrogen and helium isotopes. It is found that all these systems generate strings of overlapping resonances.