Role of pairing in the description of giant monopole resonances

Abstract

We compare the results obtained in the framework of the quasiparticle random phase approximation (QRPA) on top of a Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) with the most recent experiments on giant monopole resonances in Pb, Sn, Zr, Sm, Mo and Cd. Our calculations are fully self consistent and the density dependence of pairing interactions is, for the first time in this framework, properly taken into account. In the particle-hole (ph) channel we employ different Skyrme functionals (SLy5, SkM* and Skxs20) while in the particle-particle (pp) channel we make use of density dependent contact interactions. We introduce in the pp channel the recently proposed contact interactions which take into account the neutron-proton asymmetry. We find that no single parametrization is able to reproduce with sufficient accuracy all the nuclei. Since about two-thirds of the nuclei under investigation are better explained with a soft parametrization, this tends to suggest that the currently accepted picture for the incompressibility might require modifications.