English

Number-conserving theory of nuclear pairing gaps: a global assessment

Nuclear Theory 2011-02-21 v1 Superconductivity

Abstract

We study odd-even mass staggering of nuclei, also called pairing gaps, using a Skyrme self-consistent mean-field theory and a numerically exact treatment of the pairing Hamiltonian. We find that the configuration-space Monte Carlo method proposed by Cerf and Martin offers a practical computational procedure to carry out the numerical solutions in large-dimensional model spaces. Refitting the global strength of the pairing interaction for 443 neutron pairing gaps in our number-conserving treatment, we find the correction to the pairing correlation energies and pairing gaps to have rms values of 0.6 MeV and 0.12 MeV, respectively. The exact treatment provides a significant improvement in the fit to experimental gaps, although it is partially masked by a larger rms error due to deficiencies in other aspects of the theory such as the mean-field energy functional.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1009.3087,
  title  = {Number-conserving theory of nuclear pairing gaps: a global assessment},
  author = {Abhishek Mukherjee and Y. Alhassid and G. F. Bertsch},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1009.3087},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

11 pages, 9 figures