Spectroscopy of 26F to Probe Proton-Neutron Forces Close to the Drip Line

A long-lived J 4 1 isomer, T1=2 2:2 1 ms, has been discovered at 643.4(1) keV in the weakly bound 26 9 F nucleus. It was populated at Grand Acce le rateur National d Ions Lourds in the fragmentation of a 36S beam. It decays by an internal transition to the J 1 1 ground state [82(14)%], by decay to 26Ne, or -delayed neutron emission to 25Ne. From the -decay studies of the J 1 1 and J 4 1 states, new excited states have been discovered in 25;26Ne. Gathering the measured binding energies of the J 1 1 4 1 multiplet in 26 9 F, we find that the proton-neutron 0d5=20d3=2 effective force used in shell-model calculations should be reduced to properly account for the weak binding of 26 9 F. Microscopic coupled cluster theory calculations using interactions derived from chiral effective field theory are in very good agreement with the energy of the low-lying 1 1 , 2 1 , 4 1 states in 26F. Including three-body forces and coupling to the continuum effects improve the agreement between experiment and theory as compared to the use of two-body forces only.