Testing two-nucleon transfer reaction mechanism with elementary modes of excitation in exotic nuclei

Nuclear Field Theory of structure and reactions is confronted with observations made on neutron halo dripline nuclei, resulting in the prediction of a novel (symbiotic) mode of nuclear excitation, and on the observation of the virtual effect of the halo phenomenon in the apparently non-halo nucleus $^7$Li. This effect is forced to become real by intervening the virtual process with an external (t,p) field which, combined with accurate predictive abilities concerning the absolute differential cross section, reveals an increase of a factor 2 in the cross section due to the presence of halo ground state correlations, and is essential to reproduce the value of the observed $d \sigma(^7$Li(t,p)$^9$Li)/d$\Omega$.