Kinetic energy and spin-orbit splitting in nuclei near neutron drip line

Abstract

Two important ingredients of nuclear shell-structure, kinetic energy and spin-orbit splitting, are studied as a function of orbital angular momenta \ell and binding energies, when binding energies of neutrons decrease towards zero. If we use the standard parameters of the Woods-Saxon potential in \beta stable nuclei and approach the limit of zero binding energy from 10 MeV, the spin-orbit splitting for n=1 orbitals decreases considerably for \ell=1, while for \ell > 2 little decreasing is observed in the limit. In contrast, the kinetic energy decreases considerably for \ell \simleq 3. The smaller the \ell values of orbitals, the larger the decreasing rate of both kinetic energy and spin-orbit splitting. The dependence of the above bservation on the diffuseness of potentials is studied.