Tin-100: A gateway to ab initio calculations in heavy nuclei:
For many years Tin-100 (100Sn) has stood as a distant milestone of first-principles calculations of atomic nuclei, a gateway to modeling nuclei in the heavy-mass region above atomic mass 100. 100Sn is the heaviest self-conjugate nucleus, it exhibits the largest known β-decay strength, and is close to the proton dripline. As reported in Physical Review Letters (2017), TRIUMF nuclear theorists linked the structure of nuclei around 100Sn, the heaviest doubly magic nucleus with equal neutron and proton numbers, to nucleon-nucleon and three-nucleon forces constrained only by data of few-nucleon systems. The results provide the first ab initio prediction that 100Sn is indeed doubly magic, paving the way for ab initio calculations to the heaviest nuclei.