Triton Clustering in Neutron Rich Nuclei

Abstract

Recently, it has been reported that as one goes from oxygen to fluorine, just the addition of one more proton, provides extraordinary stability to fluorine which can bind six more neutrons beyond what oxygen can. It is shown here that this surprising stability can be understood if neutron rich nuclei, $^{24}O$ and $^{27}F$ are treated as bound states of eight and nine-tritons respectively. Also the recently discovered $^{42}Si$ is predicted to have a bound state structure of fourteen tritons.