Democratic Decay of 6Be Exposed by Correlations

The interaction of an E/A = 70-MeV Be-7 beam with a Be target was used to populate levels in Be-6 following neutron knockout reactions. The three-body decay of the ground and first excited states into the alpha + p + p exit channel were detected in the High Resolution Array. Precise three-body correlations extracted from the experimental data allowed us to obtain insight into the mechanism of the three-body democratic decay. The correlation data are in good agreement with a three-cluster-model calculation and thus validate this theoretical approach over a broad energy range.