Structure of the doubly magic nuclei ${}^{208}$Pb and ${}^{266}$Pb from ab initio computations

Abstract

Theoretical studies indicate that the superheavy neutron-rich nucleus ${}_{82}^{266}$Pb${}_{184}$ is doubly magic and at the neutron drip line. While its density distributions and single-particle energies have been computed, the structure of this nucleus is yet unknown. We perform ab initio computations of ${}^{266}$Pb using an interaction from an effective field theory of quantum chromodynamics tuned only on properties of nuclei with $A\le 4$. We validate our theoretical framework by computing the first $2^{+}$ and $3^{-}$ excited states of ${}^{208}$Pb, finding agreement with experimental data. We confirm that ${}^{266}$Pb is doubly magic and show that its $3^{-}$ state, located below the $2^{+}$ state, exhibits an excitation gap of 2.6 MeV with respect to the ground state. Our calculations also suggest that this nucleus is at the neutron drip line.

Comments: 5 pages, 5 figures, corrected typos, updated data reference