Continuum Effects and Three-Nucleon Forces in Neutron-Rich Oxygen Isotopes

Abstract

We employ interactions from chiral effective field theory and compute binding energies, excited states, and radii for isotopes of oxygen with the coupled-cluster method. Our calculation includes the effects of three-nucleon forces and of the particle continuum, both of which are important for the description of neutron-rich isotopes in the vicinity of the nucleus ²⁴O. Our main results are the placement of the neutron drip-line at ²⁴O, the assignment of spins, parities and resonance widths for several low-lying states of the drip-line nucleus, and an efficient approximation that incorporates the effects of three-body interactions.