Neutron Drip Line in Calcium Isotopes from a Chiral Interaction
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 , while nuclear density functionals typically place the neutron drip line near , at . We present the chiral interaction , 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 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 .