Study of ¹⁹C by One-Neutron Knockout

The spectroscopic structure of ¹⁹C, a prominent one-neutron halo nucleus, has been studied with a ²⁰C secondary beam at 290 MeV/nucleon and a carbon target. Neutron-unbound states populated by the one-neutron knockout reaction were investigated by means of the invariant mass method. The preliminary relative energy spectrum and parallel momentum distribution of the knockout residue, ¹⁹C∗, were reconstructed from the measured four momenta of the¹⁸C fragment, neutron, and beam. Three resonances were observed in the spectrum, which correspond to the states at Ex = 0.62(9), 1.42(10), and 2.89(10) MeV. The parallel momentum distributions for the 0.62-MeV and 2.89-MeV states suggest spin-parity assignments of 5/2⁺ and 1/2⁻, respectively. The 1.42-MeV state is in line with the reported 5/22⁺ state.