Nuclear Charge Radii of Silicon Isotopes

Download paper here The nuclear charge radius of 32Si was determined using collinear laser spectroscopy. The experimental result was confronted with ab initio nuclear lattice effective field theory, valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group, and mean field calculations, highlighting important achievements and challenges of modern many-body methods. The charge radius of 32Si completes the radii of the mirror pair 32Ar-32Si, whose difference was correlated to the slope L of the symmetry energy in the nuclear equation of state. Our result suggests L ≤ 60 MeV, which agrees with complementary observables.