The neutron dripline in calcium isotopes from a chiral interaction
Nuclear Theory
2025-12-15 v1
Abstract
Interactions derived from effective field theories of quantum chromodynamics have thus far failed to bind calcium nuclei beyond neutron number , while nuclear density functionals typically place the neutron dripline near Ca, at . We present the chiral interaction NLO, 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 to , important excited states, and nuclear matter near saturation. Using ab-initio methods, we find that the calcium two-neutron dripline extends to Ca.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.11723,
title = {The neutron dripline in calcium isotopes from a chiral interaction},
author = {B. S. Hu and A. Ekström and C. Forssén and G. Hagen and W. G. Jiang and T. Miyagi and T. Papenbrock},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.11723},
year = {2025}
}