In this Letter, we report on alpha particle emission through the nuclear break-up in the reaction 40Ca on a 40Ca target at 50A MeV. It is observed that, similarly to nucleons, alpha particles can be emitted to the continuum with very specific angular
distribution during the reaction. The alpha particle properties can be understood as resulting from an alpha cluster in the daughter nucleus that is perturbed by the short range nuclear attraction of the collision partner and emitted. A time-dependent theory that describe the alpha particle wave-function evolution is able to reproduce qualitatively the observed angular distribution. This mechanism offers new possibilities to study alpha particle properties in the nuclear medium.
Microscopic theories beyond mean-field are developed to include pairing, in-medium nucleon-nucleon collisions as well as effects of initial fluctuations of one-body observables on nuclear dynamics. These theories are applied to nuclear reactions. The
role of pairing on nuclear break-up is discussed. By including the effect of zero point motion of collective variables through a stochastic mean-field theory, not only average evolution of one-body observables are properly described but also fluctuations. Diffusion coefficients in fusion as well as mass distributions in transfer reactions are estimated.
