Nuclear compressibility and its effect on nuclear binding energies from the study of muonic atoms

Abstract

The variation of nuclear parameter with mass number elicits information about nuclear compressibility. Analysis of muonic x-ray transitions provides an elegant method to investigate the behaviour of the nuclear parameterr 0. It is observed from the behaviour ofr 0 that nuclei in the regionA⩽70 are highly compressible while those in the regionA∼210 are almost incompressible. The behaviour ofr 0 is incorporated into the semi-empirical mass formula through the Coulomb energy term. From the modified mass formula thus obtained binding energies of about 440 spherical nuclei have been calculated. The results suggest that nuclear compressibility imposes certain relationship between excess binding energies (E exp−E cal) and neutron. proton number. The present study also points out that shell effects exhibited by nuclear binding energies cannot be accounted for by simply varying the coefficients of the mass formula: on the other hand extra terms are necessary to explain them.