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    Neutron Drip Line in Calcium Isotopes from a Chiral Interaction

    B. S. Hu1,2,3,*, A. Ekström4, C. Forssén4, G. Hagen3,5, W. G. Jiang6, T. Miyagi7, and T. Papenbrock5,3

    • *Contact author: baishanhu@pku.edu.cn

    Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 142502 – Published 30 September, 2026

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pz1t-q6v1

    Abstract

    Interactions derived from effective field theories of quantum chromodynamics have thus far failed to bind calcium nuclei beyond neutron number N=40, while nuclear density functionals typically place the neutron drip line near Ca70, at N=50. We present the chiral interaction N3LOTexas, 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 A=3 to 208, important excited states, and nuclear matter near saturation. Using ab initio methods, coupled cluster and valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group, we find that the calcium two-neutron drip line extends to Ca71.

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