The oxygen isotopes

The properties of the oxygen isotopes provide diverse examples of progress made in experiments and theory. This chain of isotopes has been studied from beyond the proton drip line in ¹²O to beyond the neutron drip line in ^25,26O. This short survey starts with the microscopic G matrix approach for ¹⁸O of Kuo and Brown in the 1960's and shows how theory has evolved. The nuclear structure around the doubly-magic nucleus ²⁴O is particularly simple in terms of the nuclear shell model. The nuclear structure around the doubly-magic nucleus ¹⁶O exhibits the coexistence of single-particle and collective structure.