Detailed illustration of the accuracy of currently used nuclear-mass models

Abstract

The ability of nuclear mass models to describe experimentally known nuclear masses is studied. Twelve frequently used models of various kinds are considered. From the selected models, eleven are of global character and one is a local model specially adapted to describe heavy nuclei. To decrease the number of nuclei over which the accuracy is averaged, the global region (Z,N≥8) is divided into four subregions, in which the accuracy is studied separately. Finally, to reach the best precision, the accuracy is investigated without any averaging for each nucleus separately. The results are presented in the form of colored maps, large enough to be easily and accurately read.Besides the accuracy of the studied models, their predictive power is also considered.It is found that the accuracy of the description of the mass strongly depends on the nuclear-mass model and on the region of nuclei to which the model is applied. The best accuracy is obtained by the two recent Chinese models WS3+ and WS4+. Generally, no clear, strong correlation between the accuracy of the description of already known masses by a given model and its predictive power for new masses is observed. However, such a correlation is found for separate models and in separate regions of nuclei, more often for the macroscopic–microscopic models than for the other approaches.