Physical Review Letters· 2026Q1
Neutron Drip Line in Calcium Isotopes from a Chiral Interaction
- 2citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
A new chiral interaction, N$^3$LO$_{ m Texas}$, predicts the calcium two-neutron drip line extends to $^{71}$Ca, resolving a discrepancy between previous theoretical models.
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Key points
- The N$^3$LO$_{ m Texas}$ chiral interaction combines two- and three-nucleon potentials optimized with emulator-accelerated fits.
- The interaction accurately reproduces binding energies, charge radii, excited states, and nuclear matter properties for nuclei up to A=208.
- Ab-initio coupled cluster and valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group methods were employed.
- The calcium two-neutron drip line is predicted to extend to $^{71}$Ca (N=51).
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Interactions derived from effective field theories of quantum chromodynamics have thus far failed to bind calcium nuclei beyond neutron number $N=40$, while nuclear density functionals typically place the neutron dripline near $^{70}$Ca, at $N=50$. We present the chiral interaction N$^3$LO$_{\rm Texas}$, a combination of two- and three-nucleon potentials at fourth and third chiral order, respectively, with low-energy constants optimized using emulator-accelerated fits to few- and many-body data. This interaction accurately reproduces binding energies and charge radii of key nuclei with mass number $A=3$ to $208$, important excited states, and nuclear matter near saturation. Using ab-initio methods, coupled cluster and valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group, we find that the calcium two-neutron dripline extends to $^{71}$Ca.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Physical Review Letters, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Nuclear and High Energy PhysicsPhysics and Astronomy