No Arabic abstract
Atomic masses of the neutron-rich isotopes $^{121-128}$Cd, $^{129,131}$In, $^{130-135}$Sn, $^{131-136}$Sb, and $^{132-140}$Te have been measured with high precision (10 ppb) using the Penning trap mass spectrometer JYFLTRAP. Among these, the masses of four r-process nuclei $^{135}$Sn, $^{136}$Sb, and $^{139,140}$Te were measured for the first time. The data reveals a strong $N$=82 shell gap at $Z$=50 but indicates the importance of correlations for $Z>50$. An empirical neutron pairing gap expressed as the odd-even staggering of isotopic masses shows a strong quenching across $N$=82 for Sn, with the $Z$-dependence that is unexplainable by the current theoretical models.
The FRS-ESR facility at GSI provides unique conditions for precision measurements of large areas on the nuclear mass surface in a single experiment. Values for masses of 604 neutron-deficient nuclides (30<=Z<=92) were obtained with a typical uncertainty of 30 microunits. The masses of 114 nuclides were determined for the first time. The odd-even staggering (OES) of nuclear masses was systematically investigated for isotopic chains between the proton shell closures at Z=50 and Z=82. The results were compared with predictions of modern nuclear models. The comparison revealed that the measured trend of OES is not reproduced by the theories fitted to masses only. The spectral pairing gaps extracted from models adjusted to both masses, and density related observables of nuclei agree better with the experimental data.
The odd-even staggering of the yield of final reaction products has been studied as a function of proton (Z) and neutron (N) numbers for the collisions 84 Kr+112 Sn and 84 Kr+124 Sn at 35 MeV/nucleon, in a wide range of elements (up to Z ~ 20). The experimental data show that staggering effects rapidly decrease with increasing size of the fragments. Moreover the staggering in N is definitely larger than the one in Z. Similar general features are qualitatively reproduced by the GEMINI code. Concerning the comparison of the two systems, the staggering in N is in general rather similar, being slightly larger only for the lightest fragments produced in the n-rich system. In contrast the staggering in Z, although smaller than that in N, is sizably larger for the n-poor system with respect to the n-rich one.
We explore the systematics of odd-even mass staggering with a view to identifying the physical mechanisms responsible. The BCS pairing and mean field contributions have A- and number parity dependencies which can help disentangle the different contributions. This motivates the two-term parametrization c_1 + c_2/A as a theoretically based alternative to the inverse power form traditionally used to fit odd-even mass differences. Assuming that the A-dependence of the BCS pairing is weak, we find that mean-field contributions are dominant below mass number A~40 while BCS pairing dominates in heavier nuclei.
We have performed shell-model calculations of binding energies of nuclei around $^{132}$Sn. The main aim of our study has been to find out if the behavior of odd-even staggering across N=82 is explainable in terms of the shell model. In our calculations, we have employed realistic low-momentum two-body effective interactions derived from the CD-Bonn nucleon-nucleon potential that have already proved quite successful in describing the spectroscopic properties of nuclei in the $^{132}$Sn region. Comparison shows that our results fully explains the trend of the experimental staggering.
Odd-even effects, also known as staggering effects, are a common feature observed in the yield distributions of fragments produced in different types of nuclear reactions. We review old methods, and we propose new ones, for a quantitative estimation of these effects as a function of proton or neutron number of the reaction products. All methods are compared on the basis of Monte Carlo simulations. We find that some are not well suited for the task, the most reliable ones being those based either on a non-linear fit with a properly oscillating function or on a third (or fourth) finite difference approach. In any case, high statistic is of paramount importance to avoid that spurious structures appear just because of statistical fluctuations in the data and of strong correlations among the yields of neighboring fragments.