- Crawford, HL;
- Fallon, P;
- Macchiavelli, AO;
- Doornenbal, P;
- Aoi, N;
- Browne, F;
- Campbell, CM;
- Chen, S;
- Clark, RM;
- Cortés, ML;
- Cromaz, M;
- Ideguchi, E;
- Jones, MD;
- Kanungo, R;
- MacCormick, M;
- Momiyama, S;
- Murray, I;
- Niikura, M;
- Paschalis, S;
- Petri, M;
- Sakurai, H;
- Salathe, M;
- Schrock, P;
- Steppenbeck, D;
- Takeuchi, S;
- Tanaka, YK;
- Taniuchi, R;
- Wang, H;
- Wimmer, K
One of the most exotic light neutron-rich nuclei currently accessible for experimental study is ^{40}Mg, which lies at the intersection of the nucleon magic number N=28 and the neutron drip line. Low-lying excited states of ^{40}Mg have been studied for the first time following a one-proton removal reaction from ^{41}Al, performed at the Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory of RIKEN Nishina Center with the DALI2 γ-ray array and the ZeroDegree spectrometer. Two γ-ray transitions were observed, suggesting an excitation spectrum that shows unexpected properties as compared to both the systematics along the Z=12, N≥20 Mg isotopes and available state-of-the-art theoretical model predictions. A possible explanation for the observed structure involves weak-binding effects in the low-lying excitation spectrum.