Effect of tensor interaction on deformation and shell structure of medium-heavy and superheavy nuclei

Abstract

The effect of tensor interaction is studied on deformation and shell structure of various nuclei within the deformed Skyrme Hartree–Fock+BCS model. We discuss first the effect of tensor interaction on the deformations of Kr isotopes and 80Zr. Second, the same model is applied to investigate the role of tensor correlations on the evolution of shell structure in superheavy nuclei. To this end, we adopt four different Skyrme interactions: SLy5 without tensor interaction, and SLy5+T, T24 and T44 with tensor interaction. It is shown that the SLy5+T interaction gives the shape changes of the lowest configurations of Kr isotopes similar to experimental observations. The importance of the tensor correlations is also pointed out for the single-particle spectra of protons and neutrons in 249Bk and 251Cf, respectively. The large shell gaps of superheavy nuclei are found at Z = 114 and Z = 120 for protons and N = 184 for neutrons with the spherical shape irrespective of the tensor correlations. It is also shown that Z = 114 and N = 164 shell gaps are more pronounced by the tensor correlations of SLy5+T interaction. The effect of time-odd components of Skyrme energy density functionals is examined on the deformation and the stability of superheavy elements.