Isotone Chain Study of <i>p–</i> -atom spectroscopy and Strong Spin-orbit splittings

Abstract Antiprotonic atoms have served as a pivotal tool for investigating the properties of baryon-baryon interactions, including their spin dependence. Examining the spin-orbit splittings induced by their strong interactions also could help clarify the nature of the $\bar{p}$-nucleus interactions and their fraction mediated by scalar and vector mesons. Although the strong spin-orbit splittings for a certain nucleus have been observed experimentally, thorough theoretical investigations have not yet been conducted. In this study, theoretical calculations based on the Dirac equation are systematically performed for nuclei along several isotone “chains”. As a result, it is found that the magnitude of the strong spin-orbit splittings exhibits a significant dependence not only on the corresponding level shifts and widths almost linearly, but also on whether the optical potential enters as a vector or scalar potential. These results are expected to provide deeper insights into $\bar{p}$-nucleus interactions, and by extension baryon-baryon interactions, as well as into the properties of the mesons that mediate them.