The fission barriers in Actinides and superheavy nuclei in covariant density functional theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates how pairing correlations affect fission barriers in actinides and superheavy nuclei using relativistic density functional theories, highlighting the importance of pairing force modeling for accurate predictions.

Contribution

It compares the effects of zero-range and finite-range pairing forces within RHB and RMF+BCS frameworks, emphasizing the inadequacy of the constant gap approximation.

Findings

Constant gap approximation fails to accurately describe barriers.

Significant differences in barrier heights between pairing force types.

RHB calculations reveal the importance of pairing force range.

Abstract

The impact of pairing correlations on the fission barriers is investigated in Relativistic Hartree Bogoliubov (RHB) theory and Relativistic Mean Field (RMF)+BCS calculations. It is concluded that the constant gap approximation in the usual RMF+BCS calculations does not provide an adequate description of the barriers. The RHB calculations show that there is a substantial difference in the predicted barrier heights between zero-range and finite range pairing forces even in the case when the pairing strengths of these two forces are adjusted to the same value of the pairing gap at the ground state.