Quenching of spectroscopic factors for proton removal in oxygen isotopes

Phys Rev Lett. 2011 Jul 15;107(3):032501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.032501. Epub 2011 Jul 11.

Abstract

We present microscopic coupled-cluster calculations of the spectroscopic factors for proton removal from the closed-shell oxygen isotopes (14,16,22,24,28)O with a chiral nucleon-nucleon interaction at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order. We include coupling-to-continuum degrees of freedom by using a Hartree-Fock basis built from a Woods-Saxon single-particle basis. This basis treats bound and continuum states on an equal footing. We find a significant quenching of spectroscopic factors in the neutron-rich oxygen isotopes, pointing to enhanced many-body correlations induced by strong coupling to the scattering continuum above the neutron emission thresholds.