Structure of the lightest tin isotopes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the structure of the doubly magic nucleus $^{100}$Sn and nearby isotopes using advanced nuclear forces, predicting its magicity and properties with high precision, consistent with experimental data.

Contribution

It links nuclear structure around $^{100}$Sn to fundamental nucleon interactions and provides precise predictions for its properties and neighboring isotopes, incorporating three-nucleon forces.

Findings

$^{100}$Sn is confirmed to be doubly magic.

Predicted quadrupole collectivity of $^{100}$Sn.

Reproduced small energy splitting in $^{101}$Sn.

Abstract

We link the structure of nuclei around $^{100}$Sn, the heaviest doubly magic nucleus with equal neutron and proton numbers ($N=Z=50$), to nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) and three-nucleon ($NNN$) forces constrained by data of few-nucleon systems. Our results indicate that $^{100}$Sn is doubly magic, and we predict its quadrupole collectivity. We present precise computations of $^{101}$Sn based on three-particle--two-hole excitations of $^{100}$Sn, and reproduce the small splitting between the lowest $J^\pi=7/2^+$ and $5/2^+$ states. Our results are consistent with the sparse available data.