Ab initio nuclear shape coexistence and emergence of island of inversion around N = 20
We extend a nuclear ab initio framework based on chiral two- and three-nucleon interactions to investigate shape coexistence and the degradation of the N = 20 magic number in both even-even and odd-even magnesium isotopes. The quantum-number projected generator coordinate method, combined with the in-medium similarity renormalization group (IMSRG), is employed to compute their low-lying states. This approach reasonably reproduces the coexistence of weakly and strongly deformed states at comparable energies, and allows us to track the emergence of the N = 20 island of inversion through the continuous IMSRG evolution of the chiral Hamiltonian. Our results indicate that the ground state of 33 Mg with spin-parity 3 / 2 − is predominantly a strongly deformed configuration with K π = 3 / 2 − , while the lowest 7 / 2 − state is predicted to be a shape isomer, consisting of a mixture of weakly deformed configurations with different K values. The results highlight the essential roles of both dynamical and static collective correlations in reproducing the ordering of nuclear states with distinct shapes.
Authors
- H. Hergert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0520-0856)
- J. M. Yao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9505-1852)
- T. Rodrı́guez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3516-8239)
- B. Bally (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1802-6802)
- Cairong Ding (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5880-4840)
- C. F. Jiao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5292-5158)
- E. F. Zhou
Institutions
- Universidad Complutense de Madrid (ES)
- Sun Yat-sen University (CN)
- Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives (FR)
- Université Paris-Saclay (FR)
- CEA Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Institut de Recherche sur les Lois Fondamentales de l'Univers (FR)
- Michigan State University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physics Letters B
- Published
- 2025-04-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139464
- Citations
- 6
- Primary Topic
- Nuclear physics research studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 11.22