What is the distribution of mass in an atomic nucleus?

[carllacan]

Hi.

This may be a trivial question, but I'm unable to find a definitve answer.

How is the mass on a atomic nucleus distributed?

I read somewhere that it was uniformly distributed, and somewhere else that it resembled a normal distribution. Can you help me out?

Thank you.

 

[mathman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_nucleus

Above may help. Short answer - models are approximate.

 

[carllacan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_nucleus

Above may help. Short answer - models are approximate.

And according to the most correct model how is the mass distribution like?

 

[mfb]

Roughly uniform in the center, and then relatively sharp edges. Apart from halo nuclei, but they are exotic and not long-living.

 

[bcrowell]

And of course many nuclei are ellipsoidal rather than spherical.

I read somewhere that it was uniformly distributed, and somewhere else that it resembled a normal distribution. Can you help me out?

If you use a harmonic oscillator potential, then the single-particle wavefunctions will resemble Gaussian shapes (like a normal distribution). But that's an unrealistic feature of the harmonic oscillator potential.