Three-body forces and proton-rich nuclei

TL;DR

This paper investigates three-nucleon forces in proton-rich nuclei, providing experimental agreement and new predictions for isotones near the proton dripline, advancing understanding of nuclear interactions and isospin symmetry.

Contribution

First application of three-nucleon forces to proton-rich nuclei, offering predictions for unmeasured isotones and insights into isospin symmetry breaking.

Findings

Ground-state energies match experimental data.

Predicted spectra align with known results for certain isotones.

First predictions for many N=8 and N=20 isotones near the proton dripline.

Abstract

We present the first study of three-nucleon (3N) forces for proton-rich nuclei along the N=8 and N=20 isotones. Our results for the ground-state energies and proton separation energies are in very good agreement with experiment where available, and with the empirical isobaric multiplet mass equation. We predict the spectra for all N=8 and N=20 isotones to the proton dripline, which agree well with experiment for 18Ne, 19Na, 20Mg and 42Ti. In all other cases, we provide first predictions based on nuclear forces. Our results are also very promising for studying isospin symmetry breaking in medium-mass nuclei based on chiral effective field theory.