Pairing strength in the relativistic mean-field theory determined from the fission barrier heights of actinide nuclei and verified by pairing rotation and binding energies

Abstract

Abstract We have studied the strength of the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) pairing force, used as a residual interaction to the relativistic mean-field approach, to reproduce the height of the inner fission barriers for actinide nuclei. It was found that increasing the pairing strength by about $13\%$ makes the reproduction of the inner fission barriers better over a wide range of actinide nuclei. This result was verified by using the moment of inertia of the pairing rotational energy, which was introduced to avoid mean-field and odd-mass effects in the pairing interaction, to deduce purely the pairing strength. The pairing interaction thus determined could also improve the description of the binding energy of heavy nuclei. As a result, a consistent picture among inner fission barrier, binding energy, and pairing moment of inertia could be obtained in terms of the relativistic mean-field + BCS theory for a broad region of the actinide nuclei.