Nuclear isotope shifts within the local energy-density functional approach Original Research Article

The foundation of the local energy-density functional method to describe the nuclear ground-state properties is given. The method is used to investigate differential observables such as the odd–even mass differences and odd–even effects in charge radii. For a few isotope chains of spherical nuclei, the calculations are performed with an exact treatment of the Gorʹkov equations in the coordinate-space representation. A zero-range cutoff density-dependent pairing interaction with a density-gradient term is used. The evolution of charge radii and nucleon separation energies is reproduced reasonably well including kinks at magic neutron numbers and sizes of staggering. It is shown that the density-dependent pairing may also induce sizeable staggering and kinks in the evolution of the mean energies of multipole excitations. The results are compared with the conventional mean field Skyrme–HFB and relativistic Hartree–BCS calculations. With the formulated approach, an extrapolation from the pairing properties of finite nuclei to pairing in infinite matter is considered, and the dilute limit near the critical point, at which the regime changes from weak to strong pairing, is discussed.