Systematics of nucleon density distributions and neutron skin of nuclei

TL;DR

This paper systematically analyzes proton and neutron density distributions across 760 nuclei using Skyrme energy density, deriving simple formulas to estimate radii and neutron skin thicknesses, aiding predictions for unmeasured nuclei.

Contribution

It introduces simple, accurate formulas for nuclear radii and neutron skin thicknesses based on extensive density profile analysis, useful for extrapolation and theoretical calculations.

Findings

Formulas accurately fit radii and diffuseness data

Neutron skin thicknesses agree with experimental data

Useful for estimating properties of unmeasured or exotic nuclei

Abstract

Proton and neutron density profiles of 760 nuclei in the mass region of A=16-304are analyzed using the Skyrme energy density for the parameter set SLy4. Simple formulae are obtained to fit the resulting radii and diffuseness data. These formulae may be useful to estimate the values of the unmeasured radii, and especially in extrapolating charge radius values for nuclei which are far from the valley of stability or to perform analytic calculations for bound and/or scattering problems. The obtained neutron and proton root-mean-square radii and the neutron skin thicknesses are in agreement with the available experimental data.