Eur. Phys. J. A (2004) 22: 461-470
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2004-10053-5

Systematic study of structure of carbon isotopes with the antisymmetrized molecular dynamics plus generator coordinate method

¹ Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, 113-0033, Tokyo, Japan
² 351-0198, Saitama, Japan
³ Nuclear Physics Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague-Rez, Czech Republic

^* e-mail: thiamova@tkyntm.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Received: 2 March 2004
Accepted: 22 July 2004
Published online: 11 November 2004

Abstract

The structure of low-lying states of the carbon isotopes is investigated using the improved version of the Antisymmetrized Molecular Dynamics (AMD) Multi-Slater Determinant model. The theoretical method is found to be very useful to study ground-state properties of various nuclei covering light unstable nuclei. The calculations succeed to reproduce reasonably well many experimental data for the carbon isotopes ¹²C- ²²C such as binding energies, the energies of the 2⁺ ₁ states in the even-even isotopes, radii and electromagnetic transition strengths. We investigate the structure change with the increasing neutron number and observe the existence of various exotic phenomena, like the development of a neutron skin and large deformations which appear in unstable nuclei. Our calculations clearly support the existence of the N = 8 and N = 16 neutron magic numbers. The role of the spin-orbit interaction in the description of the studied isotopes and in the development of cluster structures is discussed. A special approach, important for weakly bound systems, is adopted for ¹⁵C. It enables us to better describe the tail of the wave function.