Enhanced moments of inertia for rotation in neutron-rich nuclei

Abstract

Ground-state moments of inertia (MoI) are investigated for approximately 1700 even–even nuclei from the proton drip line to the neutron drip up to Z=120 and N=184. The cranked Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov equation is solved in the coordinate space using the Skyrme and pairing energy density functionals. This model well describes the available experimental data of the first excited Iπ=2+ state energy of more than 300 nuclides possessing appreciable deformation. The MoI is found to greatly increase near the drip line, whereas the deformation is found to be not as strong as estimated by the empirical relation when the pairing functional including the isovector-density dependence is adopted. The currently used pairing functionals produce large uncertainties in the prediction of E(21+) values near the neutron drip line.