Giant neutron halos in the non-relativistic mean field approach

Abstract

Giant neutron halos in medium-heavy nuclei are studied in the framework of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) approach with Skyrme interactions. The appearance of such structures depends sensitively on the effective interaction adopted. This is illustrated by comparing the predictions of SLy4 and SkI4 in the Ca and Zr isotopic chains. The latter force predicts a neutron halo in the Zr chain with $A>122$ due to the weakly bound orbitals $3p1/2$ and $3p3/2$. It is found that the energies of states near the separation threshold depend sensitively on effective mass values. The structure of the halo is analyzed in terms of the occupation probabilities of these orbitals and their partial contributions to the neutron density. The antihalo effect is also discussed in the case of $^{124}\mathrm{Zr}$ by comparing the occupation probabilities and wave functions of the Hartree-Fock neutron single-particle states near the Fermi energy with the corresponding HFB quasiparticle states.