A Secure Path to the Dripline Based on Theory and Experiment

A research program is outlined that is intended to answer the question how the properties of protons and neutrons depend on the nucleon asymmetry when the proton or neutron dripline is approached. These properties include elastic cross sections, bound single-particle properties, including removal energy, spectroscopic factors, strength distribution, one-body density matrix, and the contribution to the energy of the ground state from two-body interactions. The framework of the Green's function method is employed to link presently available data to be cast in the form of the complex potentials (including their asymmetry dependence) that govern the behavior of nucleons in a large energy window ranging more than 100 MeV above and below the Fermi energy for the Ca isotopes. This procedure employs dispersion relations between the real and imaginary parts of the potential and is referred to as the dispersive optical model (DOM) approach pioneered by Mahaux. Predictions of data for nuclei further along towards the dripline can then be obtained from extrapolation, allowing further improvements, etc.