Neutron drip line in the Ca region from Bayesian model averaging

Understand

The region of heavy calcium isotopes forms the frontier of experimental and theoretical nuclear structure research where the basic concepts of nuclear physics are put to stringent test.

• The recent discovery of the extremely neutron-rich nuclei around $^{60}$Ca [Tarasov, 2018] and the experimental determination of masses for $^{55-57}$Ca (Michimasa, 2018] provide unique information about the binding energy surface in this region.
• To assess the impact of these experimental discoveries on the nuclear landscape's extent, we use global mass models and statistical machine learning to make predictions, with quantified levels of certainty, for bound nuclides between Si and Ti.
• Using a Bayesian model averaging analysis based on Gaussian-process-based extrapolations we introduce the posterior probability $p_{ex}$ for each nucleus to be bound to neutron emission.