Probing mixed-spin pairing in heavy nuclei

Abstract

The nature of the nuclear pairing condensate is an active topic of investigation, especially as regards its neutron-proton versus identical-particle character, which manifests as the difference between spin-singlet and spin-triplet pairing. In this work, we probe the recently proposed mixed-spin pairing condensates, using a phenomenological Hamiltonian and Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory along with the gradient method. In addition to improving the solution of the many-body problem, we have calculated a series of physical quantities and examined the robustness of the mixed-spin pairing state as the input Hamiltonian is modified. Overall, we find that even though the mixed-spin correlation energy is suppressed in comparison to earlier work, the new pairing behavior persists. We also discuss the possibility of directly probing the mixed-spin pairing phase.