The role of the elemental nature of A=3 nuclei in neutron-rich nuclei

TL;DR

This paper explores the elemental nature of A=3 nuclei in neutron-rich systems by modeling them as composed of tritons, predicting new magic nuclei and shell structures using relativistic mean field calculations.

Contribution

It extends the elementary particle model approach to neutron-rich nuclei, predicting new magic nuclei based on triton clustering and shell structure analysis.

Findings

Identification of six new magic nuclei.

Prediction of a new shell structure in neutron-rich nuclei.

Confirmation of predictions through separation energy and binding energy analyses.

Abstract

The idea of treating the trinucleon systems as elementary entities in the elementary particle model (EPM) as an Effective Field Theory has been a success in explaining the weak charge-changing processes in nuclei. The EPM results are found to be as good as those obtained from nuclear microscopic models using two- and three-body forces. We extend this concept to investigate the validity of the elemental nature of $A=3$ nuclei through studies of nuclear structure of neutron-rich nuclei. By treating neutron-rich nuclei as primarily made up of tritons as its building blocks, we extract one- and two-triton separation energies of these nuclei. Calculations have been performed here within relativistic mean field (RMF) models with latest interactions. Clear evidence arises of a new shell structure with well-defined predictions of new magic nuclei. These unique predictions have been consolidated by standard one- and two-neutron separation energy calculations. The binding energy per nucleon plots of these nuclei also confirm these predictions. We make unambiguos prediction of six magic nuclei: $_{\:\:8}^{24}{\rm O}_{16}$, $_{20}^{60}{\rm Ca}_{40}$, $_{\:\:35}^{105}{\rm Br}_{70}$, $_{\:\:41}^{123}{\rm Nb}_{82}$, $_{\:\:63}^{189}{\rm Eu}_{126}$ and $_{\:\:92}^{276}{\rm U}_{184}$.