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# Study of Proton Magic Even-Even Isotopes and Giant Halos of Ca Isotopes with Relativistic Continuum Hartree-Bogoliubov Theory

## I Introduction

The study of exotic nuclei, which are so-called due to their large N/Z ratios (isospin) and their interesting properties, e.g. halo and skin, has attracted world wide attention . With the recent developments in accelerator technology and detection techniques, it has come into reality to produce these exotic nuclei and study their detailed properties with the radioactive ion beam (RIB) facilities. Since Tanihata et al. discovered the first case of halo in an exotic nucleus 11Li with RIB in 1985 , more and more exotic nuclei have been investigated with various modern experimental methods to understand this attractive phenomenon better. For nuclei far from the $`\beta `$-stability valley and with small nucleon separation energy, the valence nucleons in exotic nuclei extend over quite a wide space to form low density nuclear matter. It is expected that the ”halo” in exotic nuclei provides an interesting case to study the nuclear environment in astrophysics in the laboratory.

Very neutron-rich nuclei and, in particular, those near the neutron-drip lines and near closed shells, play an important role in nuclear astrophysics. Their properties such as binding energies, neutron separation energies, deformation parameters, etc., strongly affect the way neutron-rich stable isotopes are formed in nature by the so-called r process.

Furthermore, the exotic nuclei are expected to exhibit some other interesting phenomena such as the disappearance of traditional shell gaps and the occurrence of new shell gaps, which result in new magic numbers. Ref. has reported that the new magic number $`N=16`$ appears in the light neutron drip line region. Ozawa et al. have suggested the mechanism for the formation of the new magic number, which is intimately related to the neutron halo formation and is common in nuclei near neutron drip line.

It is very helpful to use self-consistent microscopic model to study the properties of exotic nuclei. During the past two decades, the relativistic mean field (RMF) theory has received wide attention, because the RMF theory is very successful in describing many nuclear phenomena for nuclei even far from stability as well as the stable nuclei. Compared with the non-relativistic mean field theory, RMF can reproduce the right nuclear incompressibility coefficient and saturation properties (Coester line) in nuclear matter and gives naturally the spin-orbit coupling potential. The reviews on RMF theory are given in Ref.  . The starting point of the RMF theory is the Lagrangian which describes the nucleons as Dirac spinors moving in a mean field, composed of the interaction between nucleons (protons and neutrons) and mesons ($`\sigma ,\omega ,\rho `$), and also Coulomb field. From this viewpoint, the RMF theory is more microscopic in a sense of describing the nuclear system at the meson level.

Usually for exotic nuclei, their Fermi surfaces are very close to the continuum threshold. In these cases, the valence nucleons could be easily scattered to the continuum states due to the pairing correlation. Thus, theories which can properly handle the pairing and continuum states are needed to describe the properties of exotic nuclei. For the pairing interaction, the simple BCS method and general Bogoliubov quasi-particle transformation are two candidates. The former is very useful and successful for stable nuclei. However, when it is extended to exotic nuclei, the occupation probability would become finite for those continuum states and involve unphysical fermion gas In this case, we should use the Bogoliubov transformation to handle the pairing correlation in exotic nuclei instead of the simple BCS method. Based on the RMF theory, the relativistic Hatree-Bogoliubov (RHB) equation can be derived by quantization of the meson fields as well as the nucleon fields in Lagrangian density . Furthermore, in order to describe self-consistently both the continuum and bound states and the coupling between them, the RHB theory must be solved in coordinate space, i.e., the newly developed Relativistic Continuum Hartree-Bogoliubov (RCHB) theory .

The RCHB theory was extremely successful in describing the ground state properties of nuclei both near and far from the $`\beta `$-stability line. A remarkable success of the RCHB theory is the new interpretation of the halo in 11Li  and the prediction of the exotic phenomenon as giant halos in Zr ($`A>122`$) isotopes . The giant halos are very interesting phenomena in exotic nuclei because the halos are formed by more than two neutrons scattered as Cooper pairs to the continuum region. However, the exotic Zr ($`Z=40`$) isotopes with $`N>82`$ are rather heavy for observation by the RIB facilities at the present. With the present RIB techniques, light drip line nuclei are more probable to be accessed with the transfer reaction or other reaction mechanism. It is thus extremely valuable for us to investigate the giant halo phenomena in lighter nuclei like Ca ($`Z=20`$) isotopes.

The Calcium isotope chains have received much attention due to its rich experimental results on binding energy, density distribution, single particle energy, radius, etc. Though those data are now limited near the stability line, it is useful to calculate these quantities in order to test the microscopic theory by future experiments. Also, there lie shell effects in this chain due to the short shell period as the traditional magic numbers are $`N=`$ 20, 28, 50 and sub-magic number $`N=40`$. The properties of Ca isotope have been investigated with various methods based on the mean field theory, e.g., the non-relativistic Hartree-Fock (HF) and Hartree- Fock Bogoliubov (HFB) method , the Skyrme Hartree Fock (SHF) method , relativistic density dependent Hartree-Fock method , and the self-consistent Hartree-Fock calculation plus the random-phase approximation . We apply here the RCHB theory to investigate the ground state properties of the Ca isotope chain, especially probing the halo properties in the exotic nuclei near the neutron drip line.

In the former letter , we have reported briefly the halos discovered in Ca isotopes near the drip line region with the RCHB theory. Here we give details of the investigation of the mechanism of the appearance of the giant halos. Besides the detailed discussion on Ca isotopes, the ground state properties of other proton magic isotope chains, O, Ni, Zr, Sn, and Pb are discussed in this article. The paper is organized as follows: In Sec. II, a brief outline of the RCHB theory is given. In Sec. III, we provide the numerical results on these proton magic even-even nuclei and the miscellaneous properties for Ca isotopes, such as two neutron separation energies $`S_{2n}`$, radius, density distribution, single particle energy level, contribution from continua, spin-orbit splitting, potential diffuseness. In Sec. IV the prospect on the theoretical progress and experimental expectation of the giant halo nuclei are reviewed. Finally, Sec. V summarizes our main results.

## II Relativistic Continuum Hartree Bogoliubov Theory

The RCHB theory, which is the extension of the RMF theory with the Bogoliubov transformation in the coordinate representation, is suggested in Ref. , and its detailed formalism and numerical solution for a particular case can be found in Ref.  and the references therein. The basic ansatz of the RMF theory is a Lagrangian density whereby nucleons are described as Dirac particles which interact via the exchange of various mesons and the photon. The mesons are the scalar sigma ($`\sigma `$), vector omega ($`\omega `$) and iso-vector vector rho ($`\stackrel{}{\rho }`$). The rho ($`\stackrel{}{\rho }`$) meson provides the necessary isospin asymmetry. The scalar sigma meson moves in a self-interacting field having cubic and quadratic terms with strengths $`g_2`$ and $`g_3`$, respectively. The Lagrangian then consists of the free baryon and meson parts and the interaction part with minimal coupling, together with the nucleon mass $`M`$, and $`m_\sigma `$, $`g_\sigma `$, $`m_\omega `$, $`g_\omega `$, $`m_\rho `$, $`g_\rho `$ the masses and coupling constants of the respective mesons and:

$`\begin{array}{cc}& =\overline{\psi }(i\text{/}M)\psi +\frac{1}{2}_\mu \sigma ^\mu \sigma U(\sigma )\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu }\mathrm{\Omega }^{\mu \nu }\\ & +\frac{1}{2}m_\omega ^2\omega _\mu \omega ^\mu \frac{1}{4}\stackrel{}{R}_{\mu \nu }\stackrel{}{R}^{\mu \nu }+\frac{1}{2}m_\rho ^2\stackrel{}{\rho }_\mu \stackrel{}{\rho }^\mu \frac{1}{4}F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }\\ & g_\sigma \overline{\psi }\sigma \psi g_\omega \overline{\psi }\text{/}\omega \psi g_\rho \overline{\psi }\text{/}\stackrel{}{\rho }\stackrel{}{\tau }\psi e\overline{\psi }\text{/}A\psi .\end{array}`$ (4)
The field tensors for the vector mesons are given as:

$`\{\begin{array}{ccc}\mathrm{\Omega }^{\mu \nu }\hfill & =\hfill & ^\mu \omega ^\nu ^\nu \omega ^\mu ,\hfill \\ \stackrel{}{R}^{\mu \nu }\hfill & =\hfill & ^\mu \stackrel{}{\rho }^\nu ^\nu \stackrel{}{\rho }^\mu g^\rho (\stackrel{}{\rho }^\mu \times \stackrel{}{\rho }^\nu ),\hfill \\ F^{\mu \nu }\hfill & =\hfill & ^\mu \stackrel{}{A}^\nu ^\nu \stackrel{}{A}^\mu .\hfill \end{array}`$ (8)
For a realistic description of nuclear properties, a nonlinear self-coupling for the scalar mesons turns out crucial :

$$U(\sigma )=\frac{1}{2}m_\sigma ^2\sigma ^2+\frac{g_2}{3}\sigma ^3+\frac{g_3}{4}\sigma ^4$$
(9)
The classical variation principle gives the following equations of motion :

$$[\stackrel{}{\alpha }\stackrel{}{p}+V_V(\stackrel{}{r})+\beta (M+V_S(\stackrel{}{r}))]\psi _i=ϵ_i\psi _i$$
(10)
for the nucleon spinors and

$`\{\begin{array}{ccc}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma +U^{}(\sigma )\right)\hfill & =\hfill & g_\sigma \rho _s\hfill \\ \left(\mathrm{\Delta }+m_\omega ^2\right)\omega ^\mu \hfill & =\hfill & g_\omega j^\mu (\stackrel{}{r})\hfill \\ \left(\mathrm{\Delta }+m_\rho ^2\right)\stackrel{}{\rho }^\mu \hfill & =\hfill & g_\rho \stackrel{}{j}^\mu (\stackrel{}{r})\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Delta }A_0^\mu (\stackrel{}{r})\hfill & =\hfill & ej_\rho ^\mu (\stackrel{}{r})\hfill \end{array}`$ (15)
for the mesons, where

$`\{\begin{array}{ccc}V_V(\stackrel{}{r})\hfill & =\hfill & g_\omega \text{/}\omega +g_\rho \text{/}\stackrel{}{\rho }\stackrel{}{\tau }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}e(1\tau _3)\text{ /}\stackrel{}{A},\hfill \\ V_S(\stackrel{}{r})\hfill & =\hfill & g_\sigma \sigma (\stackrel{}{r})\hfill \end{array}`$ (18)
are the vector and scalar potentials respectively and the source terms for the mesons are

$`\{\begin{array}{ccc}\rho _s\hfill & =\hfill & _{i=1}^A\overline{\psi }_i\psi _i\hfill \\ j^\mu (\stackrel{}{r})\hfill & =\hfill & _{i=1}^A\overline{\psi }_i\gamma ^\mu \psi _i\hfill \\ \stackrel{}{j}^\mu (\stackrel{}{r})\hfill & =\hfill & _{i=1}^A\overline{\psi }_i\gamma ^\mu \stackrel{}{\tau }\psi _i\hfill \\ j_p^\mu (\stackrel{}{r})\hfill & =\hfill & _{i=1}^A\overline{\psi }_i\gamma ^\mu {\displaystyle \frac{1\tau _3}{2}}\psi _i,\hfill \end{array}`$ (23)
where the summations are over the valence nucleons only. It should be noted that as usual, the present approach neglects the contribution of negative energy states, i.e., no-sea approximation, which means that the vacuum is not polarized. The coupled equations Eq. (10) and Eq. (15) are nonlinear quantum field equations, and their exact solutions are very complicated. Thus the mean field approximation is generally used: i.e., the meson field operators in Eq. (10) are replaced by their expectation values. Then the nucleons move independently in the classical meson fields. The coupled equations are self-consistently solved by iteration.

For spherical nuclei, i.e., the systems with rotational symmetry, the potential of the nucleon and the sources of meson fields depend only on the radial coordinate $`r`$. The spinor is characterized by the angular momentum quantum numbers $`l`$, $`j`$, $`m`$, the isospin $`t=\pm {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}`$ for neutron and proton respectively, and the other quantum number $`i`$. The Dirac spinor has the form:

$$\psi (\stackrel{}{r})=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\text{i}{\displaystyle \frac{G_i^{lj}(r)}{r}}Y_{jm}^l(\theta ,\varphi )}{{\displaystyle \frac{F_i^{lj}(r)}{r}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }\widehat{\stackrel{}{r}})Y_{jm}^l(\theta ,\varphi )}\right)\chi _t(t),$$
(24)
where $`Y_{jm}^l(\theta ,\varphi )`$ are the spinor spherical harmonics and $`G_i^{lj}(r)`$ and $`F_i^{lj}(r)`$ are the remaining radial wave function for upper and lower components. They are normalized according to

$$_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑r(|G_i^{lj}(r)|^2+|F_i^{lj}(r)|^2)=1.$$
(25)
The radial equation of spinor Eq. (10) can be reduced as :

$`\{\begin{array}{ccc}ϵ_iG_i^{lj}(r)\hfill & =\hfill & ({\displaystyle \frac{}{r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _i}{r}})F_i^{lj}(r)+(M+V_S(r)+V_V(r))G_i^{lj}(r)\hfill \\ ϵ_iF_i^{lj}(r)\hfill & =\hfill & (+{\displaystyle \frac{}{r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _i}{r}})G_i^{lj}(r)(M+V_S(r)V_V(r))F_i^{lj}(r).\hfill \end{array}`$ (28)
where

$$\kappa =\{\begin{array}{cc}(j+1/2)\hfill & forj=l+1/2\hfill \\ +(j+1/2)\hfill & forj=l1/2.\hfill \end{array}$$

The meson field equations become simply radical Laplace equations of the form:

$$\left(\frac{^2}{r^2}\frac{2}{r}\frac{}{r}+m_\varphi ^2\right)\varphi =s_\varphi (r),$$
(29)
$`m_\varphi `$ are the meson masses for $`\varphi =\sigma ,\omega ,\rho `$ and for photon ( $`m_\varphi =0`$ ). The source terms are:

$`s_\varphi (r)=\{\begin{array}{cc}g_\sigma \rho _sg_2\sigma ^2(r)g_3\sigma ^3(r)\hfill & \mathrm{for}\mathrm{the}\sigma \mathrm{field}\hfill \\ g_\omega \rho _v\hfill & \mathrm{for}\mathrm{the}\omega \mathrm{field}\hfill \\ g_\rho \rho _3(r)\hfill & \mathrm{for}\mathrm{the}\rho \mathrm{field}\hfill \\ e\rho _c(r)\hfill & \mathrm{for}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{Coulomb}\mathrm{field},\hfill \end{array}`$ (34)
$`\{\begin{array}{ccc}4\pi r^2\rho _s(r)\hfill & =\hfill & _{i=1}^A(|G_i(r)|^2|F_i(r)|^2)\hfill \\ 4\pi r^2\rho _v(r)\hfill & =\hfill & _{i=1}^A(|G_i(r)|^2+|F_i(r)|^2)\hfill \\ 4\pi r^2\rho _3(r)\hfill & =\hfill & _{p=1}^Z(|G_p(r)|^2+|F_p(r)|^2)_{n=1}^N(|G_n(r)|^2+|F_n(r)|^2)\hfill \\ 4\pi r^2\rho _c(r)\hfill & =\hfill & _{p=1}^Z(|G_p(r)|^2+|F_p(r)|^2).\hfill \end{array}`$ (39)
The Laplace equation can in principle be solved by the Green function:

$$\varphi (r)=_0^{\mathrm{}}r^2𝑑r^{}G_\varphi (r,r^{})s_\varphi (r^{}),$$
(40)
where for massive fields

$$G_\varphi (r,r^{})=\frac{1}{2m_\varphi }\frac{1}{rr^{}}(e^{m_\varphi |rr^{}|}e^{m_\varphi |r+r^{}|})$$
(41)
and for Coulomb field

$$G_\varphi (r,r^{})=\{\begin{array}{cc}1/r\hfill & \mathrm{for}\mathrm{r}>\mathrm{r}^{}\hfill \\ 1/r^{}\hfill & \mathrm{for}\mathrm{r}<\mathrm{r}^{}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(42)
Eqs. (28) and (29) could be solved self-consistently in the usual RMF approximation. For RMF, however, as the classical meson fields are used, the equations of motion for nucleons derived from Eq. (4) do not contain pairing interaction. In order to have pairing interaction, one has to quantize the meson fields which leads to a Hamiltonian with two-body interaction. Following the standard procedure of Bogoliubov transformation, a Dirac Hartree-Bogoliubov equation could be derived and then a unified description of the mean field and pairing correlation in nuclei could be achieved. For the detail, see Ref.  and the references therein. The RHB equations are as following:

$$d^3r^{}\left(\begin{array}{cc}h\lambda & \mathrm{\Delta }\\ \mathrm{\Delta }& h+\lambda \end{array}\right)\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\psi _U}{\psi _V}\right)=E\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\psi _U}{\psi _V}\right),$$
(43)
where

$$h(\stackrel{}{r},\stackrel{}{r}^{})=\left[\stackrel{}{\alpha }\stackrel{}{p}+V_V(\stackrel{}{r})+\beta (M+V_S(\stackrel{}{r}))\right]\delta (\stackrel{}{r},\stackrel{}{r}^{})$$
(44)
is the Dirac Hamiltonian and the Fock term has been neglected as is usually done in RMF. The pairing potential is :

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}(\stackrel{}{r},\stackrel{}{r}^{})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^3r_1d^3r_1^{}\underset{\stackrel{~}{k}\stackrel{~}{k}^{}}{}V_{kk^{},\stackrel{~}{k}\stackrel{~}{k}^{}}(\stackrel{}{r}\stackrel{}{r}^{};\stackrel{}{r}_1\stackrel{}{r}_1^{})\kappa _{\stackrel{~}{k}\stackrel{~}{k}^{}}(\stackrel{}{r}_1,\stackrel{}{r}_1^{})}.`$ (45)
It is obtained from one-meson exchange interaction $`V_{kk^{},\stackrel{~}{k}\stackrel{~}{k}^{}}(\stackrel{}{r}\stackrel{}{r}^{};\stackrel{}{r}_1\stackrel{}{r}_1^{})`$ in the $`pp`$-channel and the pairing tensor $`\kappa =V^{}U^T`$

$`\kappa _{kk^{}}(\stackrel{}{r},\stackrel{}{r}^{})=<|a_ka_k^{}|>=\psi _V^k(\stackrel{}{r})^{}\psi _U^k^{}(\stackrel{}{r})^T`$ (46)
The nuclear density is as following:

$`\rho (\stackrel{}{r},\stackrel{}{r}^{})={\displaystyle \underset{i}{\overset{lj}{}}}\psi _V^{ilj}(\stackrel{}{r})^{}\psi _V^{ilj}(\stackrel{}{r}^{}).`$ (47)
As in Ref. , $`V_{kk^{},\stackrel{~}{k}\stackrel{~}{k}^{}}`$ used for the pairing potential in Eq. (45) is either the density-dependent two-body force of zero range with the interaction strength $`V_0`$ and the nuclear matter density $`\rho _0`$:

$$V(𝒓_1,𝒓_2)=V_0\delta (𝒓_1𝒓_2)\frac{1}{4}\left[1𝝈_1𝝈_2\right]\left(1\frac{\rho (r)}{\rho _0}\right)$$
(48)
or Gogny-type finite range force with the parameter $`\mu _i`$, $`W_i`$, $`B_i`$, $`H_i`$ and $`M_i`$ ($`i=1,2`$) as the finite range part of the Gogny force :

$$V(𝒓_1,𝒓_2)=\underset{i=1,2}{}e^{((𝒓_1𝒓_2)/\mu _i)^2}(W_i+B_iP^\sigma H_iP^\tau M_iP^\sigma P^\tau )$$
(49)
A Lagrange multiplier $`\lambda `$ is introduced to fix the particle number for the neutron and proton as $`N=\text{Tr}\rho _n`$ and $`Z=\text{Tr}\rho _p`$.

In order to describe both the continuum and the bound states self-consistently, the RHB theory must be solved in coordinate representation, i.e., the. Relativistic Continuum Hartree-Bogoliubov ( RCHB ) theory . It is then applicable to both exotic nuclei and normal nuclei. In Eq. (43), the spectrum of the system is unbound from above and from below the Fermi surface, and the eigenstates occur in pairs of opposite energies. When spherical symmetry is imposed on the solution of the RCHB equations, the wave function can be conveniently written as

$$\psi _U^i=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\text{i}{\displaystyle \frac{G_U^{ilj}(r)}{r}}}{{\displaystyle \frac{F_U^{ilj}(r)}{r}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }\widehat{\stackrel{}{r}})}\right)Y_{jm}^l(\theta ,\varphi )\chi _t(t),\psi _V^i=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\text{i}{\displaystyle \frac{G_V^{ilj}(r)}{r}}}{{\displaystyle \frac{F_V^{ilj}(r)}{r}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }\widehat{\stackrel{}{r}})}\right)Y_{jm}^l(\theta ,\varphi )\chi _t(t).$$
(50)
The above equation Eq. (43) depends only on the radial coordinates and can be expressed as the following integro-differential equation:

$`\{\begin{array}{ccc}{\displaystyle \frac{dG_U(r)}{dr}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa }{r}}G_U(r)(E+\lambda V_V(r)+V_S(r))F_U(r)+r{\displaystyle r^{}𝑑r^{}\mathrm{\Delta }(r,r^{})F_V(r^{})}\hfill & =\hfill & 0\hfill \\ {\displaystyle \frac{dF_U(r)}{dr}}{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa }{r}}F_U(r)+(E+\lambda V_V(r)V_S(r))G_U(r)+r{\displaystyle r^{}𝑑r^{}\mathrm{\Delta }(r,r^{})G_V(r^{})}\hfill & =\hfill & 0\hfill \\ {\displaystyle \frac{dG_V(r)}{dr}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa }{r}}G_V(r)+(E\lambda +V_V(r)V_S(r))F_V(r)+r{\displaystyle r^{}𝑑r^{}\mathrm{\Delta }(r,r^{})F_U(r^{})}\hfill & =\hfill & 0\hfill \\ {\displaystyle \frac{dF_V(r)}{dr}}{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa }{r}}F_V(r)(E\lambda +V_V(r)+V_S(r))G_V(r)+r{\displaystyle r^{}𝑑r^{}\mathrm{\Delta }(r,r^{})G_U(r^{})}\hfill & =\hfill & 0,\hfill \end{array}`$ (55)
where the nucleon mass is included in the scalar potential $`V_S(r)`$. Eq. (55), in the case of $`\delta `$-force given in Eq. (48), is reduced to normal coupled differential equations and can be solved with shooting method by Runge-Kutta algorithms. For the case of Gogny force, the coupled integro-differential equations are discretized in the space and solved by the finite element methods, see Ref. . Instead of solving Eqs. (28) and (29) self-consistently for the RMF case, now we have to solve Eqs. (55) and (29) self-consistently for the RCHB case. As the calculation for Gogny force is very time-consuming, we use them for one nucleus and fix the interaction strength of the $`\delta `$-force given in Eq. (48).

## III Results and discussions

### A Binding energies and two neutron separation energies

The numerical techniques of the RCHB theory can be found in Ref. and the references therein. In the present calculations, we follow the procedures in Ref. and solve the RCHB equations in a box with the size $`R=20`$ fm and a step size of 0.1 fm. The parameter set NL-SH  is used, which aims at describing both the stable and exotic nuclei. The use of the TM1 parameter set provides similar results and we show here only those of the NL-SH parameter . The density dependent $`\delta `$-force in the pairing channel with $`\rho _0=0.152`$ fm-3 is used and its strength $`V_0=650`$ MeV $``$ fm-3 is fixed by the Gogny force as in Ref.. The contribution from continua is restricted within a cut-off energy $`E_{cut}120`$MeV.

In this work the RCHB calculation is restricted to the spherical shape, which is a good approximation for most proton magic nuclei with $`Z=`$ 8, 20, 28, 50, 82. The RCHB code was also carried out for the Zr isotopes, with the considerations of the sub-magic number $`Z=40`$ and the fact that most of the investigations with non-relativistic codes and with relativistic RMF+BCS codes show that the nuclei above 122Zr are spherical .

We calculated ground state properties of all the even-even O, Ca, Ni, Zr, Sn, Pb isotopes ranging from the proton drip-line to the neutron drip-line with the RCHB code. We here present the binding energy $`E_b`$ calculated from the RCHB method for these isotope chains and the corresponding data available  in the last two columns in table I-IV. We do not include the tables for the Sn and Pb isotopes here to save the space. The difference ($`\mathrm{\Delta }E_b`$) between the experimental and calculated binding energies is less than 3.5 MeV for most nuclei, which is less than $`1\%`$ of the experimental values. The large difference ($`\mathrm{\Delta }E_b10`$ MeV) for some Zr isotopes are found, which are mainly due to deformation. The two neutron separation energy $`S_{2n}`$ defined as

$$S_{2n}=E_b(Z,A+2)E_b(Z,A)$$
(56)
is quite a sensitive quantity to test a microscopic theory. The two neutron separation energy becomes negative when the nucleus becomes unstable against the two neutron emission. Hence, the drip line nucleus for a corresponding isotope chain is the one before the nucleus with the negative $`S_{2n}`$. In Fig. 1 both the theoretical and the available experimental $`S_{2n}`$ are presented as a function of neutron number $`N`$ for the O, Ca, Ni, Zr, Sn, Pb isotope chains, respectively. The good coincidence between experiment and calculation is clearly seen.

We See from Fig. 1 and Tab. I-IV the proton magic even mass nuclei at the neutron drip-line are predicted as 28O, 72Ca, 98Ni, 136Zr, 174Sn, and 266Pb, respectively. Out of these neutron drip line nuclei, we have experimental information only for the O isotope. The experimental efforts were made to investigate 26O  and 28O  whether they are bound. These nuclei were found unstable and the heaviest O isotope was concluded to be 24O. Hence, the present calculation is not successful in reproducing the O neutron drip line. Numerous theoretical studies of binding energies of the neutron-rich O nuclei have been made , but these calculations failed to reproduce that 24O is the drip line nucleus as the case of RCHB with NL-SH presented here. It is known that in the relativistic mean field theory, one parameter set is used to describe all nuclei in the nuclear chart, which is quite a challenge. In fact, it is well known that the mean field theory is difficult for light nuclei. Therefore we have NL1, NL-SH, NL3, and TM1 for the heavy system and NL2 and TM2 for the light system. The heavy oxygen isotopes lie just at the border line between the light and heavy groups. Therefore it is not surprising that the NL-SH, NL1, NL2, NL3, TM1, TM2 and the non-relativistic counterparts mostly do not predict correctly the neutron drip line which is already known experimentally to be at 24O.

One may suspect that the drip-line nucleus for Ca is predicted to be 70Ca instead of 72Ca. Most calculations predict the Ca isotopes with $`N>50`$ would be unbound, as the more neutrons should fill the continuum region above the $`N=50`$ shell. For example, in Ref. and Ref. , the drip-line nucleus is predicted as 70Ca with the HFB and Skyrme HF method, respectively.

The reason for the unexpected bound nuclei 72Ca is caused by the halo effect, which also results in the disappearance of the normal $`N=50`$ magic number in the RCHB calculation. Seen along the $`S_{2n}`$ to $`N`$ curve in Fig. 1, strong kinks can be clearly seen at $`N=8`$, $`N=20,28,40`$, $`N=28,50`$, $`N=50,82`$ and $`N=126`$ for O, Ca, Ni, Zr, Sn, Pb isotope chains, respectively. All these numbers correspond to the neutron magic numbers, which come from the large gaps of single particle energy levels. However, no kink appears at the $`N=50`$ magic number for Ca isotopes in Fig. 1. In stable nuclei, the $`N=50`$ magic number is given by the big energy gap between the $`1g_{9/2}`$ and $`3s,2d`$ levels. However in the vicinity of the drip-line region of Ca isotopes, the single particle energy of $`3s_{1/2}`$ would decrease with the halo effect and its zero centrifugal potential barrier, the large gap between $`1g_{9/2}`$ and $`3s_{1/2}`$ disappears. Therefore, the nucleus 70Ca is no more a double-magic nucleus and furthermore 72Ca is also bound. This disappearance of the $`N=50`$ magic number at the neutron drip line is due to the halo property of the neutron density with the spherical shape being kept, different from the disappearance of the $`N=20`$ magic number due to deformation (the unbound 26,28O mentioned above). Most recently a new magic number $`N=16`$ has been discovered in neutron drip-line light-nuclei region which is also considered as owing to the halo effect . It can be expected also that near drip line, more disappearance of the traditional magic numbers and regeneration of new magic number would be found with the same mechanism.

Another remarkable phenomenon in Fig. 1 is that the $`S_{2n}`$ values for exotic Ca isotopes near neutron drip line are very close to zero in the large mass region, i.e., $`S_{2n}2.06,1.24,0.76,0.43,0.21,0.04`$ MeV for $`A=62,64,66,68,70,72`$ isotopes, respectively. If one regards 60Ca as a core, then the several valence neutrons occupying levels above the $`N=40`$ sub-shell for these $`A>60`$ exotic nuclei are all weakly bound and can be scattered easily to the continuum levels due to the pairing interaction, especially for 66-72Ca. This case is very similar to $`S_{2n}`$ in Zr isotopes with $`N>82`$ (see Fig. 1)  . Note that for Sn isotopes in the vicinity of the drip line , however, $`S_{2n}`$ decrease rather fast with the mass number and for Ni isotopes , $`S_{2n}`$ are quite large ($`2`$MeV) and undergo a sudden drop to negative value at the drip-line nucleus. Such behavior of $`S_{2n}`$ in Ca isotopes with $`N>40`$ gives us a hint that there exist giant halos in these nuclei, just as what happens in Zr isotopes with $`N>82`$ .

### B Nuclear root mean square radii

We discuss here the nuclear radii, which are the important basic physical quantity to describe atomic nuclei as well as the nuclear binding energies. In the mean field theory, the root mean square (rms) proton, neutron, mass radii ($`r_p,r_n,r_m`$) can be directly deduced from their density distributions $`\rho `$:

$$r_{p(n)}=<r_{p(n)}^2>^{1/2}=(\frac{\rho _{p(n)}r^2𝑑\tau }{\rho _{p(n)}𝑑\tau })^{1/2},$$
(57)
and

$$r_m=<r_m^2>^{1/2}=(\frac{(\rho _p+\rho _n)r^2𝑑\tau }{(\rho _p+\rho _n)𝑑\tau })^{1/2}.$$
(58)
The theoretical rms charge radii $`r_c`$ are connected with the proton radii $`r_p`$ as:

$$r_c^2=r_p^2+0.64\mathrm{fm}^2,$$
(59)
when the small isospin dependence is ignored for exotic nuclei .

It is interesting to investigate the neutron number dependence of the proton radii (or charge radii) and the neutron radii for these proton-magic isotope chains. In Fig. 2, we show the rms charge radii $`r_c`$ obtained from the RCHB theory (open symbols) and the data available (solid symbols) for the even-even Ca, Ni, Zr, Sn and Pb isotopes. The values for the O isotopes are not plotted here considering the systematic deviation of the mean field theory for light isotopes as discussed above. As it could be seen, the RCHB calculations reproduce the data very well (within 1.5$`\%`$). For a given isotopic chain, an approximate linear $`N`$ dependence of the calculated rms charge radii $`r_c`$ is clearly seen. However, the variation of $`r_c`$ for a given isotopic chain deviates from the general accepted simple $`A^{1/3}`$ law (denoted by dashed lines in Fig. 2), which shows a strong isospin dependence of nuclear charge radii is necessary for nuclei with extreme $`N/Z`$ ratio. Recently, we have investigated these charge radii as well as the large amount of experimental data and extract a formula with the $`Z^{1/3}`$ dependence and isospin dependence to better describe these charge radii all over the nuclear isotope chart .

We also plot in Fig. 3 the neutron radii $`r_n`$ from the RCHB calculation for the even-even nuclei of the O, Ca, Ni, Zr, Sn and Pb isotope chains. The prediction $`r_n`$ curve using the simple experiential equation $`r_n=r_0N^{1/3}`$ with $`r_0=1.139`$ normalizing to 208Pb is also represented in the figure. Except for the O and Ca isotopes, it is very interesting to see that the simple formula for $`r_n`$ agrees with the calculated neutron radii except for two anomalies. One appears in the Ca chain above $`N=40`$, and the other in Zr chain above $`N=82`$. The increase of exotic Ni and Sn nuclei is not as rapid as that in Ca and Zr chains. The regions of the abnormal increases of the neutron radii are just the same as those for $`S_{2n}`$. Both behaviors are connected with the formation of giant halo. As Calcium is a light element, the giant halos in exotic Ca isotopes would be much more easily accessed experimentally than in the Zr chain.

In Tab. II we present the calculated neutron, proton, matter, and charge radii for all even Ca isotopes, as well as several available charge radii data. Those radii against mass number $`A`$ are plotted in Fig. 4. For nuclear charge radii $`r_c`$, the well-known parabolic behavior along 40-48Ca is not reproduced in our calculation. It is mainly due to the improper spherical supposition to the real deformed 42,44,46Ca nuclei. It can be clearly seen that the radii $`r_p`$, $`r_n`$, $`r_m`$ and $`r_c`$ all increase with the mass number $`A`$. The mass radii $`r_m`$ as well as $`r_n`$ increase much faster than $`r_p`$ and $`r_c`$. Besides the normal increase of $`r_n`$ and $`r_m`$ with $`A`$, a slightly up-bend tendency occurs in the neutron drip line region from $`A=62`$ up to $`A=72`$.

### C Density distribution and halos

We shall concentrate from here the giant halo properties for the Ca isotopes as mainly due to the easier access by the present experimental techniques. For exotic nuclei, physics connected with the low density region in the tails of the neutron and proton distributions have attracted a lot of attention in nuclear physics as well as in other fields such as astrophysics. It is therefore of great importance to look into the matter distribution and see how the densities change with the proton to neutron ratio in these nuclei. As the density here is obtained from a fully microscopic and parameter free model which is well supported by the experimental binding energies, we now proceed to examine the density distributions of the whole chain of Calcium isotopes in this section and study the relation between the development of halo and shell effects within the model.

The density distributions for some Ca isotopes are given for the neutron, proton and matter densities in Fig. 5a-c, respectively. In these figures, the arrows represent the density variation tendency with the mass number $`A`$. From Fig. 5c, the matter densities extend outwards with $`A`$ at the nuclear surface ($`3<r<6`$ fm), while the variation is small in the center ($`r<3`$ fm). For the proton density in Fig. 5b, the density for $`r<3`$ fm decreases dramatically, and at the surface ($`r4`$fm) extends outwards monotonously with $`A`$, although the proton number is fixed to 20. It is in accordance with the increase of the proton radii $`r_p`$ and the charge radii $`r_c`$ as shown in Fig. 4. The increase of the radius is just due to the nuclear saturation property, as the total mass number $`A`$ of the nuclei is increasing. The neutron densities, which are represented in Fig. 5a, extend greatly outwards with $`A`$ on the surface and neutron skin is developing. In the center, most neutron densities also increase with $`A`$, however the increase is not as dramatic as the decrease of the proton density. As a result, the matter densities vary (mainly decrease) slightly in the interior region.

The halo phenomena are always related with the wide extension of the nuclear density distributions in space. In order to exhibit clearly the large spacial extension, the density distributions are also shown on a logarithmic scale in the corresponding figures of Fig. 5a, b, c as the inset for neutron, proton and matter density distribution. From the inset figures of Fig. 5a, the proton density decreases once more with $`A`$ in the rather exterior region of $`r>8`$ fm, meanwhile heavier Ca isotopes extend toward outside in the region of $`4<r<6`$ fm and the proton density decreases dramatically with $`A`$ in the center $`r<3`$ fm. So there exist two switching regions for the proton density: one lies in the nuclear surface ($`r4`$ fm) due to the nuclear saturation property, and the other appears over $`68`$ fm region, which are related with the neutron-deficiency.

From the neutron density represented in the inset of Fig. 5a, it is clearly seen that the neutron density distributions for Ca isotopes with $`N>40`$ extend much more widely than those for lighter ones. The tail becomes larger and larger with the neutron number $`N`$ increased from 42 to 52, which is quite different from the cases in Ni and Sn isotopes . In the latter two isotope chains, the tails of the neutron densities reach saturation beyond a specific nucleus, i.e., $`A=90`$ for Ni and $`A=160`$ for Sn. However, no saturation point is seen for the Ca isotopes as shown in Fig. 5a.

For the tails of the matter density distributions in the inset of Fig. 5c, they are mainly determined by the proton densities for proton-rich nuclei while by the neutron densities for neutron-rich nuclei. The nucleus with the smallest tail for matter distribution is shown to be 44Ca, which is nearest to the $`\beta `$-stability line, while not the lightest neutron-deficiency nucleus 34Ca. For neutron rich nuclei with $`N`$ from 42 to 52, the tail behaviors of $`r_m`$ are consistent with that of $`r_n`$, which are strong evidences that giant neutron halos exist in exotic Ca nuclei ($`A>60`$).

To give a simple quantitative idea on the density distributions and halos, in Fig. 6, the radii at which the proton and neutron densities, $`\rho _p(r)`$ and $`\rho _n(r)=10^2,10^4,10^6\mathrm{fm}^3`$, respectively, as a function of the neutron number for the Ca isotope chain are shown. As the central density of nuclear matter is about $`\rho _0`$0.16 fm-3 and the proton and the neutron density is about a half of $`\rho _0`$, the value $`r`$ for $`\rho _{p(n)}=10^2`$ fm-3 corresponds to the densities decrease to 10$`\%`$ of the central density and the surface of the nuclei. The value $`r`$ for $`\rho _{p(n)}=10^6`$ fm-3 corresponds to the tails of density distribution. From this figure, for 42Ca, we see that the proton and neutron densities have the same values at the same $`r`$, i.e., the neutron density distribution is very similar to that of proton for the $`\beta `$ stable nuclei. For neutron rich nuclei, if $`\rho _n=\rho _p`$, the neutron radius $`r`$ is much bigger. For neutron deficient nuclei, the opposite are seen. For $`\rho _n=10^6`$ fm-3, a increasing tendency for $`r`$ curve can be clearly seen, particularly, the curve shows a strong kink at $`N=62`$. The kink is also a important signal for the giant neutron halos, as well as the $`S_{2n}`$ and neutron radii $`r_n`$.

### D Single particle levels in canonical basis and contribution of continuum

The above results can be understood more clearly by considering the microscopic structure of the underlying wave functions and the single-particle energies in the canonical basis. In Fig. 7, the neutron single-particle levels in the canonical basis are shown for the even Ca isotopes from the mass number $`A=34`$ to $`A=72`$. The shell closure ($`N=20`$ and $`28`$) and sub-shell closure ($`N=40`$) are clearly seen as big gaps between levels. A dotted line in the figure represents the neutron chemical potential $`\lambda _n`$, which jumps three times at the magic or submagic neutron number on its way to almost zero at 72Ca. These jumps correspond to the shell (or sub-shell) closure just as the appearance in the $`S_{2n}`$ case. The $`\lambda _n`$ comes close to zero for nuclei near the neutron drip line, i.e., $`\lambda _n0.92`$ MeV for 62Ca, -0.64 MeV for 64Ca, -0.44 MeV for 66Ca, -0.28 MeV for 68Ca, -0.16 MeV for 70Ca, and -0.07 MeV for 72Ca. Meanwhile, no jump at $`N=50`$ in the $`\lambda _n`$ curve is in agreement with the disappearance of this traditional magic number mentioned above in the $`S_{2n}`$ case. From Fig. 7, the big gap between the $`1g_{9/2}`$ orbit and the $`sd`$ shell has disappeared in the neutron drip line region due to the lowering of $`3s_{1/2}`$ and $`2d_{5/2}`$ orbits. For example, this gap for 72Ca is only 1.02 MeV.

As neutron chemical potential $`\lambda _n`$ approaches zero, the Ca isotopes with $`A>60`$ are all weakly bound nuclei. This means that the additional neutrons will occupy the weakly bound states, which are very close to the continuum region. These neutrons supply very small binding energies, and result in nearly vanishing two neutron separation energies $`S_{2n}`$. Furthermore, the pairing interaction scatters the neutron pairs from such weakly bound states to continua as the Fermi level is close to zero. The single particle occupation of continua then affects the nuclear properties. For Ca isotopes with $`A>60`$, the added neutrons will occupy the weakly bound states and continua: $`1g_{9/2},3s_{1/2},2d_{5/2},2d_{3/2}`$, etc. Such orbits play importance roles as discussed below.

In Fig. 8, we present the occupation probabilities $`v^2`$ of neutron levels near Fermi surface (i.e., $`20E10`$ MeV) in the canonical basis for several neutron-rich even Ca isotopes, i.e., 58-72Ca. The neutron chemical potential $`\lambda _n`$ is indicated by a vertical line. For nuclei with mass number $`A<60`$, the chemical potential is quite large (e.g., -13.1 MeV for 40Ca, -6.74 MeV for 48Ca, and -3.69 MeV for 58Ca), the occupation probabilities for the continua are nearly zero. As the neutron number goes beyond the subshell $`N=40`$, the Fermi surface approaches to zero and the occupation of the continuum becomes more and more important. Summing up the occupation probabilities $`v^2`$ for the states with $`E>0`$, one can get the contribution of the continua $`n_h`$ . They are approximately 2.2, 0.6, 1.1, 1.7, 1.9 and 2.7 for 62Ca, 64Ca, 66Ca, 68Ca, 70Ca, and 72Ca, respectively. In ref. , from two to roughly six neutrons in total scattering in the continuum is predicted in Zr isotopes with $`N>82`$, while the neutron number scattering to continuum in Ca isotopes is reduced to about $`13`$.

As a typical example, we investigate in detail the single particle levels and contributions of continua with exotic nuclei 66Ca. Fig. 9 shows the neutron single-particle levels in the canonical basis for 66Ca. The length of each level is proportional to its occupied probability $`v^2`$. The Fermi surface for neutron ($`\lambda _n0.435`$ MeV) is represented with a dashed line, and the nuclear mean field potential $`V(r)+S(r)`$ is denoted with the solid curve. We here define the root mean square radius $`r_{nlj}`$ for one single-particle level denoted by $`nlj`$ as:

$$r_{nlj}=\frac{\rho _{nlj}r^2𝑑\tau }{\rho _{nlj}𝑑\tau },$$
(60)
where $`\rho _{nlj}`$ presents the probability density of each level and the corresponding wave function $`\psi _{nlj}`$. This root mean square radius $`r_{nlj}`$ for each level is shown in the parenthesis behind the corresponding level label in units of fm. Also in Tab. V, we list the single particle energies $`ϵ_{nlj}`$, the rms radii $`r_{nlj}`$ and the occupied probabilities $`v_{nlj}^2`$ for all the neutron levels with energies $`ϵ<10`$ MeV in 66Ca calculated from RCHB theory.

Here, the state $`1g_{9/2}`$ is weakly bound with the energy -0.48 MeV, while the $`3s_{1/2}`$, $`2d_{5/2}`$, $`2d_{3/2}`$, and $`1g_{7/2}`$ levels are in the continuum with energies 0.64, 1.41, 2.85, and 5.67 MeV, respectively. We note that due to the absence of a centrifugal barrier, the orbit $`3s_{1/2}`$ lies below states $`2d_{3/2}`$ and $`2d_{5/2}`$. The occupied probabilities $`v^2`$ of these states are: 0.514 for $`1g_{9/2}`$, 0.089 for $`3s_{1/2}`$, 0.071 for $`2d_{5/2}`$, 0.027 for $`2d_{3/2}`$, and 0.017 for $`1g_{7/2}`$. We get about 0.85 neutrons in these continuum states, which are about $`4/5`$ of the total contribution of the continuum $`n_h=1.1`$ for 66Ca (see Fig. 8). The $`3s_{1/2}`$ state has a rms radius 7.24 fm in comparison with the rms radii of the neighbor states ($`5`$ fm) and the total neutron rms radii (4.314 fm) owing to its zero centrifugal barrier. Therefore the nucleon occupying on the state $`3s_{1/2}`$ will contribute to the nuclear rms radius considerably.

The relative contributions $`\rho _{nlj}/\rho _n`$ of different single-particle orbits to the full neutron density as a function of radical distance $`r`$ are represented in Fig. 10 for the typical nuclei 66Ca. For comparison we also present the total neutron density $`\rho _n`$ with the shaded area in arbitrary units. In the interior of nuclei ($`r<4`$ fm), the contribution to neutron distribution mainly comes from the low-lying energy levels such as $`1s_{1/2},1p_{3/2},1p_{1/2},1d_{5/2},2s_{1/2},1d_{3/2}`$. In the nuclear surface($`r5`$ fm) and the beginner part of the tail ($`6<r<10`$ fm), the weakly bound $`f`$-$`p`$ shell states and very weakly $`1g_{9/2}`$ orbit play dominant role for neutron distribution. Then their contributions gradually decrease with the radius, while the contributions from the continuum (e.g. $`3s_{1/2},2d_{5/2}`$) become more and more important. For $`r>15`$ fm, the state $`3s_{1/2}`$ is dominant (about 60 percent) owing to its zero centrifugal barrier, and the other continuum states $`2d_{5/2},2d_{3/2},4s_{1/2}`$ and the very weakly bound state $`1g_{9/2}`$ also play their roles. It is well shown that the contributions of the continua are crucial to the tail, which is closely connected with the halo phenomena.

In Tab. VI, the energies, rms radii and occupied probabilities of the neutron single-particle level $`3s_{1/2}`$ for even isotopes 60-72Ca isotopes are presented. Its energy decreases with neutron number $`N`$, i.e., it lies in continuum for 60-68Ca and becomes slightly bound for 70,72Ca. As both the rms radii and $`v^2`$ for the state $`3s_{1/2}`$ increase monotonously with the mass number $`A`$, it will drive the tail of neutron density distribution become larger and larger as shown above. Of course, with more neutrons added to 66Ca up to the heaviest bound nucleus predicted as 72Ca, the contributions to the tail from the other continuum $`2d_{5/2},4s_{1/2}`$ and $`2d_{3/2}`$ will also become more important due to their larger occupation.

### E Vector and scalar potentials and their isospin evolution

One of the essential differences between a non-relativistic single particle equation and the relativistic Dirac equation in nuclear physics is the fact that the relativistic equation contains from the beginning two potentials $`V`$ and $`S`$, which have different behaviors under Lorentz transformation . We now investigate the vector and scalar potentials in the Ca isotope chains in detail. Fig. 11 presents the vector $`V`$ and scalar potential $`S`$ for proton (left panels) and neutron (right panels) in Ca chains as a function of the radial distance $`r`$, respectively. We can see from the figure that both the vector and scalar potentials have a Woods-Saxon shape, i.e., the similar nuclear density distribution. They nearly vanish outside the nucleus and they are more or less constant in the nuclear interior, namely $`S420`$ MeV as an attractive potential and $`V350`$ MeV as an repulsive potential.

We can clearly see that the scalar potential $`S(r)`$ for proton is just the same as that for neutron in all cases. It is isospin independent as the scalar potential comes from $`\sigma `$ meson field, which takes the same form for either proton or neutron. On the other hand, the vector potential $`V(r)`$ is isospin dependent: the potential for proton is somewhat different from neutron. The difference comes from the $`\rho `$ meson and the Coulomb interaction. For a given nucleus, the vector potential for proton is a little larger than that for neutron in the nuclear interior, and it does not vanish outside the nucleus due to the long range Coulomb interaction.

### F Spin-orbit splitting in exotic nuclei

An advantage of the relativistic mean field theory is to get the spin-orbit coupling naturally. The spin-orbit splitting has been discussed through various themes with relativistic or non-relativistic microscopic theory . Now we examine the spin-orbit splitting for the whole even Ca isotopes in the relativistic continuum Hatree-Bogoliubov theory.

The spin-orbit splitting energy $`E_{ls}`$ for the two partners ($`nlj=l1/2,nlj=l+1/2`$) is defined as:

$$E_{ls}=\frac{E_{nlj=l1/2}E_{nlj=l+1/2}}{2l+1}.$$
(61)
In Fig. 12, the spin-orbit splitting energies $`E_{ls}`$ in Ca isotopes are shown as a function of mass number $`A`$ for the proton (lower panel) and neutron (upper panel) spin-orbit partners ($`1d_{3/2},1d_{5/2}`$), ($`1g_{7/2},1g_{9/2}`$), ($`1p_{1/2},1p_{3/2}`$), ($`1f_{5/2},1f_{7/2}`$) and ($`2p_{1/2},2p_{3/2}`$). For the lighter Ca isotopes, some doublets sit in the continuum region with large positive energies in the canonical basis. It would result in some uncertainty in spin-orbit splitting. Therefore we limit the level energies $`E`$ below 10 MeV. In Fig. 12, the splitting decreases monotonically from proton-rich side to the neutron rich-side for most doublets except the doublets ($`1p_{1/2},1p_{3/2}`$) and ($`2p_{1/2},2p_{3/2}`$). The splitting of the $`p`$ doublets between two closures, i.e.,40Ca, 48Ca, fluctuates quite a lot. Above $`N=28`$, the splitting increases a little, then decline with the neutron number. For the doublets ($`1p_{1/2},1p_{3/2}`$) and ($`1d_{3/2},1d_{5/2}`$), the spin-orbit splitting for neutron and proton is very close to each other. For the doublets ($`1f_{5/2},1f_{7/2}`$) and ($`2p_{1/2},2p_{3/2}`$), there are quite big difference. Moreover, the splitting for neutron is usually smaller than that for proton.

It would be very helpful to examine the origin of the spin-orbit splitting in the Dirac equation. For the Dirac nucleon moving in a scalar and vector potentials, its equation of motion could be decoupled and reduced to either the upper component or the lower component, respectively. If it is reduced to the lower component, it will be related with another interesting topic – the pseudo-spin symmetry . Here we pay attention to the spin-orbit splitting, which is related to the upper component. The Dirac equation can be reduced for the upper component as follows, :

$`[{\displaystyle \frac{d^2}{dr^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{E+2MV_V+V_S}}{\displaystyle \frac{d(2MV_V+V_S)}{dr}}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dr}}]G_i^{lj}(r)`$ (62)
$``$ $`[{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa (1+\kappa )}{r^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{E+2MV_V+V_S}}{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa }{r}}{\displaystyle \frac{d(2MV_V+V_S)}{dr}}]G_i^{lj}(r)`$ (63)
$`=`$ $``$ $`(E+2MV_V+V_S)(EV_VV_S)G_i^{lj}(r),`$ (64)
where

$`\kappa =\{\begin{array}{cc}l1,& j=l+1/2\\ l,& j=l1/2\end{array}`$ (67)
The spin-orbit splitting is provided by the corresponding spin-orbit term :

$$\frac{1}{E+2MV(r)+S(r)}\frac{\kappa }{r}\frac{d(2MV(r)+S(r))}{dr}$$
(68)
It can be seen clearly that the spin-orbit splitting is energy dependent and depends also on the derivative of the potential $`2MV(r)+S(r)`$ as well as the particle distribution. Therefore the so-called spin-orbit potential in the RCHB theory is defined :

$$V_{ls}=\frac{1}{r}\frac{d(2MV(r)+S(r))}{dr}$$

.

The derivative of the potential difference, $`{\displaystyle \frac{d(V(r)S(r))}{dr}}`$, for proton and neutron in the Ca isotopes is given in Fig. 13. The potential difference, $`V(r)S(r)`$, for both proton and neutron are almost the same, as $`V(r)S(r)`$ is a big quantity ( $`700`$ MeV ), and the difference in the spin-orbit potential for proton and neutron could be neglected. Therefore the proton and neutron $`V_{ls}`$ are almost the same in the present model. That is the reason why the spin-orbit splitting for neutron and proton doublets ($`1p_{1/2},1p_{3/2}`$) and ($`1d_{3/2},1d_{5/2}`$) is very close to each other as shown in Fig. 12.

From 34Ca to 48Ca, the amplitude of $`V_{ls}`$ increases monotonically and from 48Ca to 72Ca, the amplitude decreases monotonically due to surface diffuseness. Meanwhile, the maximum point of the potential $`V_{ls}`$ has an outwards tendency. Thus the systematic decrease of spin-orbit splitting is partially related with the decrease of $`V_{ls}`$. Furthermore, the systematic decrease also comes from the diffuseness of the nuclear potential. In Figs. 14 and 15, we see that the potentials $`V(r)S(r)`$ and $`V(r)+S(r)`$ extend outwards into the nuclear surface, which makes the diffuseness increase with the neutron number.

So far we have investigated how the proton and neutron spin-orbit splitting changes with the mass number $`A`$, i.e. the isospin dependence. The decreasing tendency is mainly caused by the derivative of anti-nucleon potential and the diffuseness of the mean field. For one special nucleus, the potential is the same for different spin-orbit doublets, so it is necessary to investigate how the splitting changes with different quantum numbers, as in Fig. 16. To avoid the confusion caused by showing too many doublets in the figure, we present the splitting energies for $`E_{ls}`$ of $`(p_{1/2},p_{3/2})`$ partners as a function of quantum number $`n`$ in the left panel, and those of different $`n=1`$ doublets as a function of quantum number $`l`$ in the right panel, respectively, for 42,52,62,72Ca.

In the left panel of Fig. 16, the spin-orbit splitting in doublets $`(1p_{1/2},1p_{3/2})`$ is much larger than that in $`(2p_{1/2},2p_{3/2})`$ cases, and that in $`(3p_{1/2},3p_{3/2})`$ for 72Ca is the smallest. It can be clearly seen in Eqn.(64) that, besides the spin-orbit potential, the spin-orbit term also depends on the factor, $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{E+2MV(r)+S(r)}}`$. However, this factor has little energy $`E`$ dependence. In fact, the energy E (varying from -40 to 10 MeV) is a small quantity compared with the potential $`2MV(r)+S(r)`$, which is $`2M`$ ($`1800`$ MeV) in surface or about 1000MeV in the nuclear interior. Thus the energy dependence of the spin-orbit splitting difference caused directly by the energy factor can be neglected.

It has been suggested that the spin-orbit splitting difference mainly comes from the overlap between the density distribution and the spin-orbit potential $`V_{ls}`$, as demonstrated for Sn isotopes in Ref.. In Fig. 17, for 42Ca, 52Ca, 62Ca and 72Ca, the derivative of the potential $`V(r)S(r)`$, $`d(V(r)S(r))/dr`$, and the density distribution of the $`p`$-waves are given in the respective lower panel, while the spin-orbit potential, $`V_{ls}`$, multiplied by the density distributions for $`p_{1/2}`$ are respectively given in the upper panel. The overlap between the spin-orbit potential $`V_{ls}`$ and the particle distribution is represented by the curve in the corresponding upper panel. Their contribution to the spin-orbit splitting is proportional to the area surrounded by the corresponding curve and the $`x`$axis. It is clearly seen that the overlap of $`1p_{1/2}`$ is larger than that of $`2p_{1/2}`$ for all these isotopes and that of $`3p_{1/2}`$ in 72Ca is the smallest. The overlap values of $`2p_{1/2}`$ for 52,62,72Ca are very close from each other and all are smaller than that for 42Ca. These observations can explain the features observed in the right panel of Fig. 16.

Seen from the right panel of Fig. 16, the spin-orbit splitting for $`n=1`$ states has similar features for 42Ca, 52Ca, 62Ca and 72Ca. The splitting of the doublets $`(d_{1/2},d_{3/2})`$ is the largest one. With $`l`$, the splitting for $`n=1`$ increases at first (from $`p`$ to $`d`$) and then decreases (from $`d`$ to $`f,g`$). This feature can also be understood with the overlap of the spin-orbit potential and the density distribution of these orbits. Here we just choose 72Ca as an example (Fig. 18), similar patterns also appear in other Ca isotopes. The largest overlap happens for doublets $`(d_{1/2},d_{3/2})`$ in 72Ca is clearly seen from the upper panel of Fig. 18.

## IV The prospect of giant halos

Nuclear halo phenomena have been studied and investigated by many nuclear theorists and experimenters. More and more halo nuclei, including neutron halo, proton halo, and halo at excited states, have been identified and reported by different methods and advanced instruments. However, only nuclei with one or two halo nucleons are found by experiment until now.

Using various theoretical models, theorists can demonstrate quantitatively the halo density distributions. Furthermore, the giant halo nuclei with more halo nucleons have been predicted in exotic Zr nuclei with $`A>122`$ using RCHB method . The prediction of giant halo arouses a great interest of many nuclear experimenters. Unfortunately, the exotic Zr nuclei are too heavy to produce in nowadays accelerator. Here in this article, we investigated the ground state properties of the whole Ca chain by RCHB theory, and predict that giant neutron halo phenomena would lie in exotic Ca nuclei with $`A>60`$ as well as the exotic Zr nuclei. Compared to Zr isotopes, exotic Ca nuclei have lighter mass number and would be much easier to synthesize. The heaviest Ca isotope now known experimentally is 57Ca, so 5 more neutrons are needed to form the fringe giant halo nucleus 62Ca, and 9 more neutrons to form the typical giant halo nucleus 66Ca discussed above.

In order to confirm whether there exists a possibility of giant halo nuclei in more wider mass region, in Fig. 19, we show the two-neutron separation energies $`S_{2n}`$ for even-neutron Ne, Na, Mg, and Al nuclei in drip line region. Open symbols represent the values calculated from the RCHB theory with the NL-SH parameter set while corresponding solid symbols represent the data available. We note here that the calculations were performed by keeping the spherical shape and hence the comparison with the available experimental data are to be made with care. In Fig. 20, we plot $`S_{2n}`$ for exotic even-neutron Ar, K, Ca, Sc and Ti isotopes. From these two figures, the two-neutron separation energies $`S_{2n}`$ for all these isotope chains are almost parallel. There are more than one line lying within 2 MeV in the drip line region. Therefore there are quite a large mass region where a giant halo may exist.

Many nuclear physicists are making much effort to search the drip line for heavier elements. A new experiment  has been reported that both 37Na and 34Ne are bound, while 33Ne and 36Na are missed in the experiment. Looking at Fig. 19, the 37Na and 34Ne nuclei lie in the drip line region and approach to the giant halo nuclei. Therefore we suggest that much more experimental effort should be devoted to extend the study in this area and measure the mass to find the possible giant halo nuclei. Similar situation can also be seen in Fig.20 for Ar, K, Ca, Sc and Ti isotopes near the neutron dripline.

## V Summary

We have investigated the ground state properties of even-even proton magic O, Ca, Ni, Zr, Sn, and Pb isotopes with the relativistic continuum Hartree-Bogoliubov (RCHB) theory. We have found good agreement with available experimental data for the binding energies and the nuclear radii. We have shown the binding energies, $`E_b`$, two neutron separation energies, $`S_{2n}`$, and root mean square radii. The predicted neutron drip nuclei are 28O, 72Ca, 98Ni, 136Zr, 176Sn, and 266Pb, respectively. Particularly the giant halos in the neutron rich Ca and Zr isotopes close to the neutron drip line are predicted. The giant halo properties in exotic Ca isotopes with $`A>60`$ is discussed in detail.

Giant neutron halos in exotic Ca isotopes have been studied from the analysis of $`S_{2n}`$, radii, nucleon density distribution, single particle energy levels, occupation probabilities and the contributions from the continuum. The spin-orbit splitting and the potential diffuseness in Ca isotopes have also been investigated. Summarizing the present investigation, we conclude:

1. Based on the analysis of two-neutron separation energies $`S_{2n}`$, rms radii, single-particle levels spectra, the orbital occupation, and the contribution of the continuum, giant halo phenomena are suggested to appear in Ca isotopes with A$`>`$60. Similar phenomena can also be seen for nuclei near the Na or Ar isotopes near the neutron dripline.
2. The neutron drip line nucleus for Ca is 72Ca instead of 70Ca, which is caused by the disappearance of the $`N=50`$ magic number due to the halo effect of the $`3s_{1/2}`$ orbit.
3. The giant halos developed in these nuclei are due to the pairing correlation and the contribution from the continuum e.g. the $`3s_{1/2}`$ orbit.
4. The spin-orbit splitting in Ca isotopes decreases monotonically from the proton drip line to the neutron drip line for most cases. This tendency mainly comes from the diffuseness of nuclear potential with the neutron number.

In this paper, the proton magic even-even nuclei from the proton drip line to the neutron drip line are studied in detail in RCHB theory. The important contribution from the continuum due to the pairing correlations has been taken into account. The powerfulness of the RCHB method has been demonstrated for the proton magic nuclei using the assumption of the spherical shape. One of the other important degrees of freedom for the exotic nuclei is the deformation. The theoretical framework for exotic nuclei with the deformation and contribution from continuum are in progress and will be completed soon.

## VI Acknowledgements

This work was partly supported by the Major State Basic Research Development Program Under Contract Number G2000077407 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 10025522, 10047001, and 19935030. J.M. is grateful to RCNP of Osaka University and Physikdepartment, Technische Universität München for their support and warm hospitality, where a part of this work was worked out.


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# Electron capture rates on nuclei and implications for stellar core collapse

## Abstract

Supernova simulations to date have assumed that during core collapse electron captures occur dominantly on free protons, while captures on heavy nuclei are Pauli-blocked and are ignored. We have calculated rates for electron capture on nuclei with mass numbers $`A=65`$–112 for the temperatures and densities appropriate for core collapse. We find that these rates are large enough so that, in contrast to previous assumptions, electron capture on nuclei dominates over capture on free protons. This leads to significant changes in core collapse simulations.

At the end of their lives, stars with masses exceeding roughly 10 M reach a moment in their evolution when their iron core provides no further source of nuclear energy generation. At this time, they collapse and, if not too massive, bounce and explode in spectacular events known as type II or Ib/c supernovae. As the density, $`\rho `$, of the star’s center increases, electrons become more degenerate and their chemical potential $`\mu _e`$ grows ($`\mu _e\rho ^{1/3}`$). For sufficiently high values of the chemical potential electrons are captured by nuclei producing neutrinos, which for densities $`10^{11}`$ g cm-3, freely escape from the star, removing energy and entropy from the core. Thus the entropy stays low during collapse ensuring that nuclei dominate in the composition over free protons and neutrons. During the presupernova stage, i.e. for core densities $`10^{10}`$ g cm-3 and proton-to-nucleon ratios $`Y_e0.42`$, nuclei with $`A=55`$–65 dominate. The relevant rates for weak-interaction processes (including $`\beta ^\pm `$ decay and electron and positron capture) were first estimated by Fuller, Fowler and Newman FFN  (for nuclei with $`A<60`$), considering that at such conditions allowed (Fermi and Gamow-Teller) transitions dominate. The rates have been recently improved based on modern data and state-of-the-art many-body models LMP , considering nuclei with $`A=45`$–65. (This rate set will be denoted LMP in the following.) Presupernova models utilizing these improved weak rates are presented in Heger01 . In collapse simulations, i.e. densities $`10^{10}`$ g cm-3, a much simpler description of electron capture on nuclei is used. Here the rates are estimated in the spirit of the independent particle model (IPM), assuming pure Gamow-Teller (GT) transitions and considering only single particle states for proton and neutron numbers between $`Z,N=20`$–40 Bruenn85 . In particular this model results in vanishing electron capture rates on nuclei with neutron numbers larger than $`N=40`$, motivated by the observation Fuller82  that, within the IPM, GT transitions are Pauli-blocked for nuclei with $`N40`$ and $`Z40`$.

During core collapse, temperatures and densities are high enough to ensure that nuclear statistical equilibrium (NSE) is achieved. This means that for sufficiently low entropies, the matter composition is dominated by the nuclei with the highest binding energy for a given $`Y_e`$. Electron capture reduces $`Y_e`$, driving the nuclear composition to more neutron rich and heavier nuclei, including those with $`N>40`$, which dominate the matter composition for densities larger than a few $`10^{10}`$ g cm-3. As a consequence of the model applied in previous collapse simulations, electron capture on nuclei ceases at these densities and the capture is entirely due to free protons. We will show now that the employed model for electron capture on nuclei is incorrect, as the Pauli-blocking of the GT transitions is overcome by correlations Langanke01  and temperature effects Fuller82 ; Wambach84 .

The residual nuclear interaction, beyond the IPM, mixes the $`pf`$ shell with the levels of the $`sdg`$ shell, in particular with the lowest orbital, $`g_{9/2}`$. This makes the closed $`g_{9/2}`$ orbit a magic number in stable nuclei ($`N=50`$) and introduces, for example, a very strong deformation in the $`N=Z=40`$ nucleus 80Zr. Moreover, the description of the B(E2,$`0^+2_1^+`$) transition in 68Ni requires configurations where more than one neutron is promoted from the $`pf`$ shell into the $`g_{9/2}`$ orbit Sorlin02 , unblocking the GT transition even in this proton-magic $`N=40`$ nucleus. Such a non-vanishing GT strength has already been observed for 72Ge ($`N=40`$Triumf  and 76Se ($`N=42`$Helmer . In addition, during core collapse electron capture on the nuclei of interest occurs at temperatures $`T0.8`$ MeV, which, in the Fermi gas model, corresponds to a nuclear excitation energy $`UAT^2/85`$ MeV; this energy is noticeably larger than the splitting of the $`pf`$ and $`sdg`$ orbitals ($`E_{g_{9/2}}E_{p_{1/2},f_{5/2}}3`$ MeV). Hence, the configuration mixing of $`sdg`$ and $`pf`$ orbitals will be rather strong in those excited nuclear states of relevance for stellar electron capture. Furthermore, the nuclear state density at $`E5`$ MeV is already larger than 100/MeV, making a state-by-state calculation of the rates impossible, but also emphasizing the need for a nuclear model which describes the correlation energy scale at the relevant temperatures appropriately. This model is the Shell Model Monte Carlo (SMMC) approach SMMC  which allows the calculations of nuclear properties at finite temperature in unprecedentedly large model spaces. To calculate electron capture rates for nuclei $`A=65`$–112 we have first performed SMMC calculations in the full $`pf`$-$`sdg`$ shell, using a residual pairing+quadrupole interaction, which, in this model space, reproduces well the collectivity around the $`N=Z=40`$ region and the observed low-lying spectra in nuclei like 64Ni and 64Ge. From the SMMC calculations we determined the temperature-dependent occupation numbers of the various single-particle orbitals, which then became the input in RPA calculations of the capture rate, where we considered allowed and forbidden transitions up to multipoles $`J=4`$, including the momentum dependence of the operators. This model is described in more details in Langanke01 , where, however, a smaller model space has been used.

To validate our method at the early collapse conditions, we have performed diagonalization shell model studies for 64,66Ni, considering the complete $`(pf)`$ shell for 64Ni, and adopting, for 66Ni, the $`(pf)`$ shell for protons and the $`(pf_{5/2}g_{9/2})`$ shell for neutrons. We find agreement to better than a factor 2 between the present (SMMC+RPA) rates and the diagonalization shell model rates at stellar conditions ($`T0.8`$ MeV), for which the latter can still be evaluated.

For all studied nuclei we find neutron holes in the $`(pf)`$ shell and, for $`Z>30`$, non-negligible proton occupation numbers for the $`sdg`$ orbitals. This unblocks the GT transitions and leads to sizable electron capture rates. Fig. 1 compares the electron capture rates for free protons and selected nuclei along a core collapse trajectory, as taken from Mezzacappa01 . Depending on their proton-to-nucleon ratio $`Y_e`$ and their $`Q`$-values, these nuclei are abundant at different stages of the collapse. For all nuclei, the rates are dominated by GT transitions at low densities, while forbidden transitions contribute sizably for $`10^{11}`$ g cm-3. The electron chemical potential $`\mu _e`$ and the reaction $`Q`$-value are the two important energy scales of the capture process. At a given density, i.e. constant $`\mu _e`$, the rate is generally larger for nuclei with smaller $`Q`$-values. The rate is sensitive to the GT strength distribution, if $`\mu _eQ`$. However, $`\mu _e`$ increases much faster with density than the $`Q`$-values of the abundant nuclei. As a consequence the capture rates on nuclei become quite similar at larger densities, say $`10^{11}`$ g cm-3, depending now basically only on the total GT strength, but not its detailed distribution. This is demonstrated in Fig. 2 which shows our calculated capture rates as function of $`Q`$-value at 3 different stellar conditions. The $`Q`$-value dependence of the capture rate for a transition from a parent state at excitation energy $`E_i`$ to a daughter state at $`E_f`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }E=E_fE_i)`$ is well approximated by FFN85

$$\lambda =\frac{(\mathrm{ln}2)B}{K}\left(\frac{T}{m_ec^2}\right)^5\left[F_4(\eta )2\chi F_3(\eta )+\chi ^2F_2(\eta )\right]$$
(1)
where $`\chi =(Q\mathrm{\Delta }E)/T`$, $`\eta =(\mu _e+Q\mathrm{\Delta }E)/T`$, $`K=6146`$ s and $`B`$ represents a typical (Gamow-Teller plus forbidden) matrix element. The quantities $`F_k`$ are the relativistic Fermi integrals of order $`k`$.

At ($`\rho Y_e=7\times 10^9\text{ g cm}^3,T=0.93`$ MeV), we observe some scatter of the calculated rates around the mean $`Q`$-dependence indicating that several parent and daughter states with different transition strengths contribute. For nuclei with large $`|Q|`$-values the simple parametrization breaks down. However, at $`\rho _{11}Y_e4`$, the electron chemical potential has increased sufficiently that the rates become virtually independent of the strength distribution and are well represented by the average $`Q`$-value dependence (1) with $`B=4.6`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }E=2.5`$ MeV. Such a parametrization could then be adopted in core collapse simulations for even higher densities, when nuclei heavier than the ones included in the present study start to dominate in the composition.

Simulations of core collapse require reaction rates for electron capture on protons, $`R_p=Y_p\lambda _p`$, and nuclei $`R_h=_iY_i\lambda _i`$ (where the sum runs over all the nuclei present and $`Y_i`$ denotes the number abundance of a given species), over wide ranges in density and temperature. While $`R_p`$ is readily derived from Bruenn85 , the calculation of $`R_h`$ requires knowledge of the nuclear composition, in addition to the electron capture rates described earlier. The information about the nuclear composition provided by the commonly used Lattimer-Swesty equation of state LaSw91 , the total abundance of heavy nuclei and the average $`Z`$ and $`A`$, is not sufficiently detailed to make adequate use of these new reaction rates. Therefore a Saha-like NSE is used to calculate the needed abundances of individual isotopes, including Coulomb corrections to the nuclear binding energy HixPhD ; BrGa99 , but neglecting the effects of degenerate nucleons ElHi80 . The combination of this NSE with electron capture rates for approximately 200 nuclei with $`A=45`$–112, which we have determined here and in Ref. LMP , was used to compute the rate of electron capture on nuclei and the emitted neutrino spectra as a function of temperature, density and electron fraction. This is similar to treatments used in investigations of electron capture during stellar evolution Heger01  and in thermonuclear supernovae Brachwitz00 . The rates for the inverse neutrino-absorption process are determined from the electron capture rates by detailed balance. Due to its much smaller $`|Q|`$-value, the electron capture rate on the free protons is larger than the rates of abundant nuclei during the core collapse (fig. 1). However, this is misleading as the low entropy keeps the protons significantly less abundant than heavy nuclei during the collapse. Fig. 3 shows that the reaction rate on nuclei, $`R_h`$, dominates the one on protons, $`R_p`$, by roughly an order of magnitude throughout the collapse when the composition is considered. Only after the bounce shock has formed does $`R_p`$ become higher than $`R_h`$, due to the high entropies and high temperatures in the shock-heated matter that result in a high proton abundance. The obvious conclusion is that electron capture on nuclei must be included in collapse simulations.

It is also important to stress that electron capture on nuclei and on free protons differ quite noticeably in the neutrino spectra they generate. The average neutrino energy, $`E_\nu `$, of the neutrinos emitted by electron capture on nuclei, can be obtained dividing the neutrino energy loss rate (defined by $`_iY_i_i`$ where $`_i`$ is the energy loss rate by electron capture on nucleus $`i`$ and $`Y_i`$ denotes its number abundance) by the reaction rate for electron capture on nuclei, $`R_h`$. For the neutrino spectrum we adopt the parametrized form as defined in Langanke01b , adjusted to reproduce the average neutrino energy $`E_\nu `$. The neutrino emissivity is then obtained by multiplying the NSE-averaged electron capture rate by the neutrino spectra.

Fig. 3 demonstrates that neutrinos from captures on nuclei have a mean energy 40–60% less than those produced by capture on protons. Although capture on nuclei under stellar conditions involves excited states in the parent and daughter nuclei, it is mainly the larger $`|Q|`$-value which significantly shifts the energies of the emitted neutrinos to smaller values. Despite that, the total neutrino energy loss rate is larger when electron capture on nuclei is considered, caused by the increase in the total (nuclei plus protons) electron capture rate. The differences in the neutrino spectra strongly influence neutrino-matter interactions, which scale with the square of the neutrino energy and are essential for collapse simulations. In current simulations Mezzacappa01 ; Janka01 , the low energy portions of the neutrino distribution are populated via neutrino-electron inelastic scattering of high energy neutrinos produced by electron capture on free protons. Electron capture on nuclei produces neutrinos with significantly lower energies, accelerating this redistribution process. In this context, inelastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, which is usually ignored, could also be an important process haxton91 ; sampaio02 .

The effects of this more realistic implementation of electron capture on heavy nuclei have been evaluated in independent self-consistent neutrino radiation hydrodynamics simulations by the Oak Ridge and Garching collaborations Hix03 ; Janka03 . The basis of these models is described in detail in Refs. Mezzacappa01  and Janka01 . Both collapse simulations yield qualitatively the same results. Here we show a key result obtained by the Oak Ridge collaboration demonstrating that the effects of this improved treatment of nuclear electron capture are twofold. In regions close to the center of the star, the additional electron capture on heavy nuclei results in more electron capture in the new models. In regions where nuclei with $`A<65`$ dominate, the LMP rates result in less electron capture. The results of these competing effects can be seen in the first panel of Figure 4, which shows the distribution of $`Y_e`$ throughout the core when the central density reaches $`10^{14}`$ g cm-3, making the transition to nuclear matter. The combination of increased electron capture in the interior with reduced electron capture in the outer regions displaces the velocity minimum, which marks the eventual location of shock formation, by 0.1 M. The full effects of these changes on the bounce and post-bounce evolution in supernova models will be discussed in Hix03 ; Janka03 .

Our calculations clearly show that the many neutron-rich nuclei which dominate the nuclear composition throughout the collapse of a massive star also dominate the rate of electron capture. Astrophysics simulations have demonstrated that these rates have a strong impact on the core collapse trajectory and the properties of the core at bounce. The evaluation of the rates has to rely on theory as a direct experimental determination of the rates for the relevant stellar conditions (i.e. rather high temperatures) is currently impossible. Nevertheless it is important to experimentally explore the configuration mixing between $`pf`$ and $`sdg`$ shell in extremely neutron-rich nuclei as such understanding will guide and severely constrain nuclear models. Such guidance is expected from future radioactive ion-beam facilities.

###### Acknowledgements.

The work has been partly supported by the Danish Research Council, by the Spanish MCYT under contract AYA2002-04094-C03-02, by NASA under contract NAG5-8405, by the National Science Foundation under contract AST-9877130, by the Department of Energy, through the PECASE and Scientic Discovery through Advanced Computing Programs and by funds from the Joint Institute for Heavy Ion Research. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. JMS acknowledges the financial support of the “Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia”. HTJ and MR acknowledge support by the Sonderforschungsbereich 375 “Astro-Teilchenphysik” of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. KL and HTJ thank the ECT\* in Trento, where part of this collabotation has been initiated, for its hospitality.


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# Lepton pair production in relativistic ion collisions to all orders in 𝑍𝛼 with logarithmic accuracy

## Acknowledgments

We are grateful to V.Serbo and A.Tarasov for useful discussions and interest to the work.We acknowledges the warm hospitality at ECT ,Trento.(E.K) is grateful to the Institute of Physics SAS (Bratislava), where part of this work was done.The work is supported by INTAS grants 30494,00366.

## Appendix A

Let us calculate the total cross section of the lepton pair production off the nuclear Coulomb field by virtual photons i.e. the process

$`\gamma ^{}(k)+Ze^+(q_+)+e^{}(q_{})+Z`$ (A.1)
This allow us to compare the results obtained in our approach with the well known one and show how the integration over phase space can be carried out.For our purposes it is sufficient to calculate the total cross section of this process in the Born approximation.The generalization to all orders in $`\alpha `$ using our approach is an easy task.
Using the same approximations as before, the total cross section of the process (A.1) in the Born approximation read

$`d\sigma `$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{2\alpha ^3Z^2}{\pi ^2(\stackrel{}{q}^2+q_L^2)^2}}[(m^2+4z^2(1z)^2Q^2)R_S^2+(z^2+(1z)^2)\stackrel{}{R}_V^2]dzd^2q_+d^2q;`$ (A.2)
$`R_S`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\stackrel{}{q}_+^2+\mu ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\stackrel{}{q}_{}^2+\mu ^2}};\stackrel{}{R}_V={\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{q}_+}{\stackrel{}{q}_+^2+\mu ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{q}_{}}{\stackrel{}{q}_{}^2+\mu ^2}};`$ (A.3)
$`\stackrel{}{q}`$ $`=\stackrel{}{q}_++\stackrel{}{q}_{};\mu ^2=m^2+z(1z)Q^2;q_L={\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2+\stackrel{}{q}_+^2}{2z(1z)\omega }}.`$
Here $`Q^2,\omega `$ are the mass and energy of virtual photons. The integration over transverse momenta $`q,q_+`$ can be done analyticaly.We divide the integration over the two-dimensional transfer momentum q in the two regions: 1)Small momentum transfer where the longitudinal momentum $`q_L`$ has to be taken into account $`0q\xi m`$ and 2)the region where one can safely ignore it, i.e., $`\xi q\mathrm{}`$.
Using this trick the integration over transverse momenta $`\stackrel{}{q},\stackrel{}{q}_+`$ can be carried out.As a result,the total cross section for the lepton pair production by transverse and longitudinal photons in the Coulomb field can be represented as

$`\sigma _T`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4\alpha ^3Z^2}{3}}{\displaystyle [\mathrm{ln}\frac{2\omega z(1z)}{\mu }\frac{1}{2}][(\frac{m}{\mu })^2+2(z^2+(1z)^2)]\frac{dz}{\mu ^2}};`$ (A.4)
$`\sigma _S`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{16\alpha ^3Z^2}{3}}Q^2{\displaystyle z^2(1z)^2[\mathrm{ln}\frac{2\omega z(1z)}{\mu ^2}\frac{1}{2}]\frac{dz}{\mu ^4}}.`$ (A.5)
The total cross section for the pair production by transversally polarized photons $`\sigma _T`$ turns out to the Bethe-Maximon result (3) at $`Q^2`$=0. Moreover, the expression (A.4) is in agreement with (45) from .As to the pair production by longitudinal photons expressions (46,59) in  have a misprint:the combination $`z(1z)`$ enters them in the first power in contradiction with our result (A.5).