Isospin dependence of 6He+p optical potential and the symmetry energy

A consistent folding analysis of the elastic p(6He,6He)p scattering and charge exchange p(6He,6Li*)n reaction data measured at Elab=41.6A MeV has been performed within the coupled channels formalism. We have used the isovector coupling to link the isospin dependence of 6He+p optical potential to the cross section of p(6He,6Li*)n reaction exciting the 0+ isobaric analog state (IAS) at 3.563 MeV in 6Li. Based on these results and the Hartree-Fock calculation of asymmetric nuclear matter using the same isospin-dependent effective nucleon-nucleon interaction, we were able to confirm that the most realistic value of the symmetry energy Esym is around 31 MeV. Our analysis has also shown that the measured charge exchange p(6He,6Li*)n data are quite sensitive to the halo tail of the 6He density used in the folding calculation and the IAS of 6Li is likely to have a halo structure similar to that established for the ground state of 6He.