Continuum discretised BCS approach for weakly bound nuclei

Abstract

The Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) formalism is extended by including the single-particle continuum in order to analyse the evolution of pairing in an isotopic chain from stability up to the drip line. We propose a continuum discret ized generalized BCS based on single-particle pseudostates (PS). These PS are generated from the diagonalization of the single-particle Hamiltonian within a Transformed Harmonic Oscillator (THO) basis. The consistency of the results versus the size of the basis is studied. The method is applied to neutron rich Oxygen and Carbon is otopes and compared with similar previous works and available experimental data. We make use of the flexibility of the proposed model in order to study the evolution of the occupation of the low-energy continuum when the system becomes weakly bound. We find a larger influence of the non-resonant continuum as long as the Fermi level approaches zero.