Parity Doublets and Hyperfragment Binding

The Thomas variation-iteration method is applied to a model of a hypernucleus in which the binding arises from a potential which mixes orbital states of opposite parity, a situation which may prevail if the ${\Lambda }^0$ has the parity doublet structure suggested by Lee and Yang. The $P$-state part of the ground state increases with the mass of the hyperfragment and may have a probability as large as 20% for mass number 8, with correspondingly large effect upon the decay rate of the fragment and upon the ratio of mesonic to nonmesonic decay.