Further studies of the Hartree-Fock approximation in finite nuclei

New developments in spherical Hartree-Fock techniques make possible very fast calculations of heavy nuclei like 208Pb and the superheavy elements. With these methods, studies can be made using harmonic oscillator wave functions with a large number of radial nodes and including the physically important relative l-values. Some sample Hartree-Fock results are presented for a velocity-dependent effective interaction recently developed. Single-particle energies and wave functions, rms charge and mass radii, total binding energies, densities and overlaps of single-particle wave functions with pure harmonic oscillator wave functions have been calculated for the nuclei 16O, 40Ca, 48Ca, 56Ni, 88Sr, 90Zr and 208Pb. Studies of the 208Pb densities and overlaps strongly suggest that it is necessary to use a dimensionality somewhat greater than pure oscillator functions in calculating heavy nuclei. The origin of spin-orbit splitting in light and heavy nuclei is also discussed. In heavy nuclei, it is shown that the incomplete filling of a j = l± 1 2 doublet has an important effect on the splittings of the single-particle levels.