Crucial test for covariant density functional theory with new and accurate mass measurements from Sn to Pa

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the accuracy of covariant density functional theory with the PC-PK1 interaction against new precise mass measurements from Sn to Pa, highlighting its strengths and limitations across different nuclei.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of the PC-PK1 covariant density functional theory with recent experimental mass data, demonstrating its accuracy and identifying areas for improvement.

Findings

The theory achieves a rms deviation of 0.859 MeV from experimental masses.

It agrees within about 600 keV for even-even nuclei.

Larger deviations are observed for odd-A and odd-odd nuclei.

Abstract

The covariant density functional theory with the point-coupling interaction PC-PK1 is compared with new and accurate experimental masses in the element range from 50 to 91. The experimental data are from a mass measurement performed with the storage ring mass spectrometry at GSI [Chen et al., Nucl. Phys. A 882, 71 (2012)]. Although the microscopic theory contains only 11 parameters, it agrees well with the experimental data. The comparison is characterized by a rms deviation of 0.859 MeV. For even-even nuclei, the theory agrees within about 600 keV. Larger deviations are observed in this comparison for the odd-A and odd-odd nuclei. Improvements and possible reasons for the deviations are discussed in this contribution as well.