Study of N = 16 shell closure within RMF+BCS approach

Abstract

We have employed RMF+BCS (relativistic mean-field plus BCS) ap- proach to study behaviour of N = 16 shell closure with the help of ground state properties of even-even nuclei. Our present investigations include sin- gle particle energies, deformations, separation energies as well as pairing energies etc. As per recent experiments showing neutron magicity at N = 16 for O isotopes, our results indicate a strong shell closure at N = 16 in 22C and 24O. A large gap is found in between neutron 2s1/2 and 1d3/2 states for 22C and 24O. These results are also supported by a sharp increase in two neutron shell gap, zero pairing energy contribution and with excellent agreement with available experimental data. Moreover, our calculations of N = 16 isotones are however found at variance for higher Z isotones like 36Ca, where experiments show high lying first excited 2+ state indicating shell closure at N = 16.