Continuum effects and three-nucleon forces in neutron-rich oxygen isotopes

TL;DR

This paper uses chiral effective field theory interactions and coupled-cluster calculations to analyze neutron-rich oxygen isotopes, emphasizing the importance of three-nucleon forces and continuum effects in accurately predicting nuclear properties near the neutron drip-line.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive approach that includes three-nucleon forces and continuum effects in coupled-cluster calculations for oxygen isotopes, accurately predicting the neutron drip-line at O-24.

Findings

Neutron drip-line is at oxygen-24.

Assigned spins, parities, and resonance widths for low-lying states.

Developed an efficient approximation for three-body interactions.

Abstract

We employ interactions from chiral effective field theory and compute binding energies, excited states, and radii for isotopes of oxygen with the coupled-cluster method. Our calculation includes the effects of three-nucleon forces and of the particle continuum, both of which are important for the description of neutron-rich isotopes in the vicinity of the nucleus O-24. Our main results are the placement of the neutron drip-line at O-24, the assignment of spins, parities and resonance widths for several low-lying states of the drip-line nucleus, and an efficient approximation that incorporates the effects of three-body interactions.