Study of the neutron skin thickness of 208Pb in mean field models

Abstract

We study whether the neutron skin thickness Δrnp of 208Pb originates from the bulk or from the surface of the neutron and proton density distributions in mean field models. We find that the size of the bulk contribution to Δrnp of 208Pb strongly depends on the slope of the nuclear symmetry energy, while the surface contribution does not. We note that most mean field models predict a neutron density for 208Pb between the halo and skin type limits. We investigate the dependence of parity-violating electron scattering at the kinematics of the PREX experiment on the shape of the nucleon densities predicted by the mean field models for 208Pb. We find an approximate formula for the parity-violating asymmetry in terms of the central radius and the surface diffuseness of the nucleon densities of 208Pb in these models. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.