Soft dipole mode in 8He

The low-lying spectrum of 8He was studied in the 3H(6He, p)8He transfer reaction for small center of mass angles. The 0+ ground state (g.s.) of 8He and excited states, 2+ at 3.6-3.9 MeV and (1+) at 5.3-5.5 MeV, were populated with cross sections of 200, 100-250, and 90-125 μb/sr. Some evidence for the excited state at about 7.5 MeV can be found in the data. The possible nature of the near-threshold anomaly above 2.14 MeV in 8He is related to the population of a 1- continuum (soft dipole excitation) with a peak energy value at about 3 MeV. This assumption can probably resolve the problem of a large uncertainty existing in the experimental data on the 8He 2+ state energy. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd. 2009.