A systematic study of Zr and Sn isotopes in the relativistic mean field theory

The ground-state properties of Zr and Sn isotopes are studied within the relativistic mean field theory. Zr and Sn isotopes have received tremendous attention due to various reasons, including the predicted giant halos in the neutron-rich Zr isotopes, the unique feature of being robustly spherical in the region of ¹⁰⁰Sn ∼ ¹³²Sn and the particular interest of Sn isotopes to nuclear astrophysics. Furthermore, four (semi-) magic neutron numbers, 40, 50, 82 and 126, make these two isotopic chains particularly important to test the pairing correlations and the deformations in a microscopic model. In the present work, we carry out a systematic study of Zr and Sn isotopes from the proton drip line to the neutron drip line with deformation effects, pairing correlations and blocking effects for nuclei with odd number of neutrons properly treated. A constrained calculation with quadrupole deformations is performed to find the absolute minimum for each nucleus on the deformation surface. All ground-state properties, including the separation energies, the odd-even staggerings, the nuclear radii, the deformations and the single-particle spectra are analyzed and discussed in detail.