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Ab Initio Study of the Radii of Oxygen Isotopes

Zhengxue Ren1,2,3,*, Serdar Elhatisari4,5,†, and Ulf-G. Meißner2,1,6,‡

  • *Contact author: zxren@nankai.edu.cn
  • †Contact author: selhatisari@gmail.com
  • ‡Contact author: meissner@hiskp.uni-bonn.de
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 152502 – Published 8 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/y6s2-43ym

Abstract

We present an ab initio study of the charge and matter radii of oxygen isotopes from O16 to O20 using nuclear lattice effective field theory (NLEFT) with high-fidelity N3LO chiral interactions. To efficiently address the Monte Carlo sign problem encountered in nuclear radius calculations, we introduce the partial pinhole algorithm, significantly reducing statistical uncertainties and extending the reach to more neutron-rich and proton-rich isotopes. Our computed charge radii for O16, O17, and O18 closely match experimental data, and we predict a charge radius of 2.810(32) fm for O20. The calculated matter radii show excellent agreement with values extracted from low-energy proton and electron elastic scattering data, but are inconsistent with those derived from interaction cross sections and charge-changing cross section measurements. These discrepancies highlight model-dependent ambiguities in the experimental extraction methods of matter radii and underscore the value of precise theoretical benchmarks from NLEFT calculations.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 152502– Published 8 October, 2025
  • Received 5 June 2025
  • Revised 19 August 2025
  • Accepted 24 September 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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