Energy distributions from three-body decaying many-body resonances.

We compute energy distributions of three particles emerging from decaying many-body resonances. We reproduce the measured energy distributions from decays of two archetypal states chosen as the lowest 0+ and 1+ resonances in 12C populated in beta decays. These states are dominated by sequential, through the 8Be ground state, and direct decays, respectively. These decay mechanisms are reflected in the "dynamic" evolution from small, cluster or shell-model states, to large distances, where the coordinate or momentum space continuum wave functions are accurately computed.