On the symmetry energy and deformed magic number at N = 100 in rare earth nuclei

Abstract

The exotic nuclei are a fertile source of new features of nuclear structure. The evolution of new shell gaps accompanied by quenching of classical magic numbers is one of the marked features in these nuclei. These studies aimed to search and explore such behavior and find major significance on both the experimental and theoretical fronts. Here, we present an inclusive study and significant evidence of the existence of deformed shell closure at the neutron number N = 100 in rare earth Nd, Sm, Gd and Dy nuclei, obtained from the persistence of a peak in the analysis of symmetry energy and its bulk and surface components, over the isotopic chains of these nuclei, within the coherent density fluctuation model (CDFM). The relativistic mean field densities, employing the NL3 and recently developed IOPB-I parameter sets, have been used as an input within CDFM. This result is in excellent agreement with our earlier prediction of deformed magic shell closure at N = 100 in rare earth nuclei [Satpathy et al (2004 J. Phys. G 30 771); Ghouri et al (2012 Phys. Rev. C 85 064327)] and further reinforced by the experimental confirmation of deformed magicity at N = 100 in 162Sm and 164Gd nuclei [Patel et al (2014 Phys. Rev. Lett. 113 262502)]. An important consequence of the work is that N = 100 isotopes of these nuclei can serve as a waiting point in r-process nucleosynthesis and influence the heavy nuclei formation in astrophysical entities.