The present work discusses, from an ab initio standpoint, the definition, the meaning, and the usefulness of effective single-particle energies (ESPEs) in doubly closed shell nuclei. We perform coupled-cluster calculations to quantify to what extent selected closed-shell nuclei in the oxygen and calcium isotopic chains can effectively be mapped onto an effective independent-particle picture. To do so, we revisit in detail the notion of ESPEs in the context of strongly correlated many-nucleon systems and illustrate the necessity of extracting ESPEs through the diagonalization of the centroid matrix, as originally argued by Baranger. For the purpose of illustration, we analyze the impact of correlations on observable one-nucleon separation energies and nonobservable ESPEs in selected closed-shell oxygen and calcium isotopes. We then state and illustrate the nonobservability of ESPEs. Similarly to spectroscopic factors, ESPEs can indeed be modified by a redefinition of inaccessible quantities while leaving actual observables unchanged. This leads to the absolute necessity of employing consistent structure and reaction models based on the same nuclear Hamiltonian to extract the shell structure in a meaningful fashion from experimental data.

• Received 14 October 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.85.034330