Further evidence for magic neutron number N=16 in neutron-rich nuclei Original Research Article

The properties of light exotic neutron-rich nuclei far from beta-stability have been found to differ substantially from the well known properties of nuclei near the valley of beta-stability. A very principal drastic changes can be seen in the locations of magic nucleon numbers that are of fundamental importance in nuclear physics as they form the basis of nuclear shell structure. We present an analysis of experiments performed at GANIL resulting in an appearance of a neutron magic number, N=16, in very neutron-rich nuclei. The behavior of the two neutron separation energies S2n gives a very clear evidence for the existence of the new shell closure N=16 for Z=9 and 10 appearing between View the MathML source and View the MathML source orbitals. Moreover, the analysis of its derivate, confirms the magic character of N=16 in the region 6⩽Z⩽10, while the shell closure at N=20 tends to disappear for Z⩽13.