Functional approach to the non-mesonic decay of Λ-hypernuclei Original Research Article

We present an evaluation of the non-mesonic decay widths for Λ-hypernuclei (ΛN→NN, ΛNN→NNN) within the framework of the polarization propagator method. The full Λ self-energy is evaluated microscopically in nuclear matter by using the functional approach, which supplies a theoretically well grounded approximation scheme for the classification of the relevant diagrams, according to the prescriptions of the bosonic loop expansion. We employ average Fermi momenta, suitably adapted to different mass number regions (medium-light, medium and heavy hypernuclei). Moreover, we study the dependence of the decay rates on the NN and ΛN short range correlations. With a proper choice of the parameters which control these correlations in the new approximation scheme, it is possible to reproduce the experimental decay widths for A≳10 hypernuclei.