Moments of inertia in light deformed nuclei: pairing and mean-field impacts

Abstract

The dependence of the moment of inertia $\mathcal{J}$ on the pairing and axial quadrupole deformation ${\hat{I}}^2$ in ${}^{24}$Mg and ${}^{20}$Ne was investigated. The study is based on quadrupole-constrained calculations with three cranking approaches for $\mathcal{J}$ (Inglis-Belyaev, Thouless-Valatin, adiabatic time-dependent Hartree-Fock) and a representative set of Skyrme forces (SVbas, SkM*, SLy6). At variance with macroscopic collective models, the calculations predict the specific regime $d\mathcal{J}/d{\hat{I}}^2<0$ at ${\hat{I}}^2\ge 0.5$ (${}^{24}$Mg) and ${\hat{I}}^2\ge 0.6$ (${}^{20}$Ne), where the pairing breaks down. This regime is explained by two effects: full break up of the pairing and specific evolution of a {\it single} dominant particle-hole (1ph) configuration with ${\hat{I}}^2$. The analysis of experimental data for the ground-state rotational bands in ${}^{24}$Mg and ${}^{20}$Ne shows that such regime is possible at low spins.

17 pages, 8 figures; refs. [15,16] were added as compared with the previous version