Thermal quasiparticle correlations and continuum coupling in nuclei far from stability Original Research Article

The contributions of quasiparticle correlations and continuum coupling upon the superfluid properties of neutron-rich Ni isotopes are studied within the modified BCS approximation at finite temperature. The effect of quasiparticle correlations is included using a secondary Bogoliubov transformation explicitly involving the quasiparticle occupation numbers at temperature T. The effect of continuum coupling is taken in to account via the finite widths of the single-particle resonant states. It is shown that the combination of these effects washes out the sharp superfluid-normal phase transition given by the standard finite-temperature BCS calculations. It is also found that the two-neutron separation energy for 84Ni drops to zero at T ≅ 0.8 MeV.