The properties of loosely bound proton-rich nuclei around A = 20 are investigated within the framework of nuclear shell model. In these nuclei, the strength of the effective interactions involving the loosely bound proton s1=2 orbit are significantly
reduced in comparison with those in their mirror nuclei. We evaluate the reduction of the effective interaction by calculating the monopole-baseduniversal interaction (VMU) in the Woods-Saxon basis. The shell-model Hamiltonian in the sd shell, such as USD, can thus be modified to reproduce the binding energies and energy levels of the weakly bound proton-rich nuclei around A = 20. The effect of the reduction of the effective interaction on the structure and decay properties of these nuclei is also discussed.
Full shell-model diagonalization has been performed to study the structure of neutron-rich nuclei around $^{20}$C. We investigate in detail the roles played by the different monopole components of the effective interaction in the evolution of the N=1
4 shell in C, N and O isotopes. It is found that the relevant neutron-neutron monopole terms, $V^{nn}_{d_{5/2}d_{5/2}}$ and $V^{nn}_{s_{1/2}s_{1/2}}$, contribute significantly to the reduction of the N=14 shell gap in C and N isotopes in comparison with that in O isotopes. The origin of this unexpectedly large effect, which is comparable with (sometimes even larger than) that caused by the proton-neutron interaction, is related to the enhanced configuration mixing in those nuclei due to many-body correlations. Such a scheme is also supported by the large B(E2) value in the nucleus $^{20}$C which has been measured recently.
A linear universal decay formula is presented starting from the microscopic mechanism of the charged-particle emission. It relates the half-lives of monopole radioactive decays with the $Q$-values of the outgoing particles as well as the masses and c
harges of the nuclei involved in the decay. This relation is found to be a generalization of the Geiger-Nuttall law in $alpha$ radioactivity and explains well all known cluster decays. Predictions on the most likely emissions of various clusters are presented.
