Missing monopole strength of the Hoyle state in the inelastic α+12C scattering

Analyses of the inelastic alpha + C-12 scattering at medium energies have indicated that the strength of the Hoyle state (the isoscalar 0(2)(+) excitation at 7.65 MeV in C-12) seems to exhaust only 7-9% of the monopole energy weighted sum rule (EWSR), compared to about 15% of the EWSR extracted from inelastic electron scattering data. The full monopole transition strength predicted by realistic microscopic alpha-cluster models of the Hoyle state can be shown to exhaust up to 22% of the, EWSR. To explore the missing monopole strength in the inelastic alpha + C-12 scattering, we have performed a fully microscopic folding model analysis of the inelastic alpha + C-12 scattering at E-lab = 104-240 MeV using the 3-alpha resonating group wave function of the Hoyle state obtained by Kamimura, and a complex density-dependent M3Y interaction newly parametrized based on the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock results for nuclear matter. Our folding model analysis has shown consistently that the missing monopole strength of the Hoyle state is not associated with the uncertainties in the analysis of the alpha + C-12 scattering, but is most likely due to the short lifetime and weakly bound structure of this state which significantly enhances absorption in the exit alpha + C-12* (0(2)(+)) channel. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.