Ab initio calculation of the potential bubble nucleus 34Si. The possibility that an unconventional depletion (referred to as a “bubble”) occurs in the center of the charge density distribution of certain nuclei due to a purely quantum mechanical effect has attracted theoretical and experimental attention in recent years. Based on a mean-field rationale, a correlation between the occurrence of such a semibubble and an anomalously weak splitting between low angular-momentum spin-orbit partners has been further conjectured. Energy density functional and valence-space shell model calculations have been performed to identify and characterize the best candidates, among which 34Si appears as a particularly interesting case. While the experimental determination of the charge density distribution of the unstable 34Si is currently out of reach, we studied the potential bubble structure of 34Si on the basis of the state-of-the-art ab initio self-consistent Green’s function many-body method and using HPC resources at CEA Saclay (France) and the DiRAC Complexity cluster (UK). Demanding that the experimental charge density distribution and the root-mean-square radius of 36S be well reproduced, along with 34Si and 36S binding energies, only leaves one model specific model of the Hamiltonian as a serious candidate to perform this prediction. In this context, a bubble structure, whose fingerprint should be visible in an electron scattering experiment of 34Si, is predicted. The occurrence of a bubble structure in the charge distribution of 34Si is convincingly established on the basis of state-of-the-art ab initio calculations.
