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Measurement and microscopic description of odd–even staggering of charge radii of exotic copper isotopes

De Groote RP, Billowes J, Binnersley CL, Bissell ML, Cocolios TE, Goodacre TD, Farooq-Smith GJ, Fedorov DV, Flanagan KT, Franchoo S, Ruiz RFG, Gins W, Holt JD, Koszorus A, Lynch KM, Miyagi T, Nazarewicz W, Neyens G, Reinhard PG, Rothe S, Stroke HH, Vernon AR, Wendt KDA, Wilkins SG, Xu ZY, Yang XF (2020)

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Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2020

Journal

DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-0868-y

Abstract

Nuclear charge radii globally scale with atomic mass number A as A^1∕3, and isotopes with an odd number of neutrons are usually slightly smaller in size than their even-neutron neighbours. This odd–even staggering, ubiquitous throughout the nuclear landscape¹, varies with the number of protons and neutrons, and poses a substantial challenge for nuclear theory^2–4. Here, we report measurements of the charge radii of short-lived copper isotopes up to the very exotic ⁷⁸Cu (with proton number Z = 29 and neutron number N = 49), produced at only 20 ions s^–1, using the collinear resonance ionization spectroscopy method at the Isotope Mass Separator On-Line Device facility (ISOLDE) at CERN. We observe an unexpected reduction in the odd–even staggering for isotopes approaching the N = 50 shell gap. To describe the data, we applied models based on nuclear density functional theory^5,6 and A-body valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group theory^7,8. Through these comparisons, we demonstrate a relation between the global behaviour of charge radii and the saturation density of nuclear matter, and show that the local charge radii variations, which reflect the many-body polarization effects, naturally emerge from A-body calculations fitted to properties of A ≤ 4 nuclei.

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APA:

De Groote, R.P., Billowes, J., Binnersley, C.L., Bissell, M.L., Cocolios, T.E., Goodacre, T.D.,... Yang, X.F. (2020). Measurement and microscopic description of odd–even staggering of charge radii of exotic copper isotopes. Nature Physics. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-0868-y

MLA:

De Groote, R. P., et al. "Measurement and microscopic description of odd–even staggering of charge radii of exotic copper isotopes." Nature Physics (2020).

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