Probing Nuclear Structure with Kaonic Atoms through E2 Resonance Mixing
Abstract
Kaonic atoms provide a unique laboratory to investigate the interplay between atomic, nuclear, and strong-interaction physics. In heavy nuclei, atomic transitions can couple to low-lying collective nuclear excitations via the electric quadrupole interaction. When the energy difference between two kaonic atomic levels approaches that of a nuclear excitation, a resonant configuration mixing may occur, known as the E2 nuclear resonance effect. In this work, we investigate the conditions for E2 resonance in kaonic molybdenum isotopes. We describe the mixing using state-of-the-art Dirac-Fock calculations combined with updated nuclear structure inputs, including recent electric quadrupole transition strength values and excitation energies. We evaluate the sensitivity of the effect to key parameters, assess its observability in future experiments such as the EXKALIBUR program, and discuss its impact on cascade dynamics. Our results demonstrate the potential of kaonic atoms as a probe of nuclear structure, complementary to conventional nuclear spectroscopy.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.29374,
title = {Probing Nuclear Structure with Kaonic Atoms through E2 Resonance Mixing},
author = {Simone Manti and Luca De Paolis and Leonardo Abbene and Francesco Artibani and Massimiliano Bazzi and Giacomo Borghi and Damir Bosnar and Mario Bragadireanu and Antonino Buttacavoli and Mario Carminati and Alberto Clozza and Francesco Clozza and Raffaele Del Grande and Kamil Dulski and Carlo Fiorini and Ivica Friščić and Carlo Guaraldo and Mihai Iliescu and Paul Indelicato and Masa Iwasaki and Alexander Khreptak and Johan Marton and Pawel Moskal and Hiroaki Ohnishi and Kristian Piscicchia and Fabio Principato and Alessandro Scordo and Francesco Sgaramella and Michał Silarski and Diana Sirghi and Florin Sirghi and Magdalena Skurzok and Antonio Spallone and Kairo Toho and Johann Zmeskal and Catalina Curceanu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.29374},
year = {2026}
}