https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-025-01756-6
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Exploratory study on the masses of odd-Z nuclei and r-process simulation based on the deformed relativistic Hartree–Bogoliubov theory in continuum
1
Department of Physics, Anhui Normal University, 241000, Wuhu, China
2
State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, School of Physics, Peking University, 100871, Beijing, China
3
Department of Physics, Fuzhou University, 350108, Fuzhou, Fujian, China
Received:
3
September
2025
Accepted:
25
November
2025
Published online:
4
December
2025
Nuclear masses of exotic nuclei are important for both nuclear physics and astrophysics. The deformed relativistic Hartree–Bogoliubov theory in continuum (DRHBc) is capable of providing proper descriptions for exotic nuclei by simultaneously including deformation, pairing correlation and continuum effects, and a mass table of even-Z nuclei with 
has been developed based on the DRHBc theory. This work employs a methodology to estimate the masses of odd nuclei using neighboring even nuclei’s masses and microscopic pairing gaps, and the performance of microscopic pairing gaps are validated by comparing with empirical ones. Combining the DRHBc masses of even-Z nuclei and the estimated masses of odd-Z nuclei, a pseudo DRHBc mass table is developed, with the root-mean-square (rms) deviation from available mass data 
MeV. Then this mass table is employed in the r-process simulation; results show that the differences in the details of pairing gaps do not yield qualitative discrepancy in r-process abundances, while the deformation effects can influence the r-process path and thus affect the r-process abundance. In particular, the nuclear shape transitions can even lead to the discontinuity of the r-process path, suggesting that incorporating triaxiality or beyond-mean-field effects would be valuable for further improvement.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
