Eur. Phys. J. A (2009) 42: 577-581
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2008-10768-1

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Shell structure fingerprints of tensor interaction

¹ Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Warsaw, ul. Hoża 69, 00-681, Warsaw, Poland
² KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), AlbaNova University Center, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden
³ Department of Physics, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014, (YFL), Finland

^* e-mail: zalewiak@fuw.edu.pl

Received: 3 November 2008
Revised: 6 March 2009
Accepted: 6 March 2009
Published online: 4 April 2009

Abstract

We address the consequences of strong tensor terms in the local energy density functional, resulting from fits to the f _5/2 -f _7/2 splittings in ⁴⁰Ca , ⁴⁸Ca , and ⁵⁶Ni . In this study, we focus on the tensor contribution to the nuclear binding energy. In particular, we show that it exhibits an interesting topological feature closely resembling that of the shell correction. We demonstrate that in the extreme single-particle scenario at spherical shape, the tensor contribution shows tensorial magic numbers equal to N(Z) = 14 , 32, 56, and 90, and that this structure is smeared out due to configuration mixing caused by pairing correlations and migration of proton/neutron sub-shells with neutron/proton shell filling. Based on a specific Skyrme-type functional SLy4_T, we show that the proton tensorial magic numbers shift with increasing neutron excess to Z = 14 , 28, and 50.