Relativistic description of medium-heavy nuclei far from stability Original Research Article

Exotic nuclei far form the line of beta-stability have gained considerable interest in recent years both on the experimental as on the theoretical side. New phenomena are predicted such as an increasing surface diffuseness, a quenching of the spin–orbit term, and changes in the nuclear shell structure. Approaching the drip-lines one expects on the proton-rich side proton radioactivity, and for N=Z nuclei proton–neutron pairing and on the neutron-rich side the formation of neutron skins and neutron halos. A reliable description of the spin–orbit term and its isospin dependence is therefore necessary. We review the investigations in the framework of Relativistic Mean Field (RMF) and Relativistic Hartree–Bogoliubov (RHB) theory in the medium-heavy nuclei far from the valley of stability. In particular, we show as an application the quenching of the spin–orbit splitting with increasing distance from the valley of beta-stability.