Single-particle potentials for spherical nuclei

Abstract A new group of spherical single-particle potentials applicable to a wide nuclidic region are obtained. The central component of each potential is a five-parameter refinement of the Woods–Saxon potential including two new parameters, of which one parameter governs the behavior at large distances and the other produces a dip in the surface region. These five potential parameters as well as the parameters in the spin–orbit component are assumed to vary smoothly with Z and N . In evaluating the Coulomb energy of a single proton, occasional deviations of that proton from the single-particle state to more complicated states are taken into account by including an adjustable parameter. The adjustable parameters introduced are fixed by comparison with experimental data of single-particle levels in the vicinities of 15 doubly magic or magic-submagic nuclides ranging from 4 He to 208 Pb, and a reasonable agreement with experiment is obtained.