Neutron Drip Line in the Ca Region from Bayesian Model Averaging

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 ⁶⁰Ca O. B. Tarasov et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 022501 (2018), 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.022501] and the experimental determination of masses for ^55-57Ca S. Michimasa et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 022506 (2018), 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.022506] 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. We find that extrapolations for drip-line locations, at which the nuclear binding ends, are consistent across the global mass models used, in spite of significant variations between their raw predictions. In particular, considering the current experimental information and current global mass models, we predict that ⁶⁸Ca has an average posterior probability p_ex≈76 % to be bound to two-neutron emission while the nucleus ⁶¹Ca is likely to decay by emitting a neutron (p_ex≈46 %).