Detailed Study of the Ground State Properties of the Newly Found Nuclide 48Ni in Relativistic Mean-Field Theory

We investigate in detail the ground state properties of the newly discovered doubly magic nucleus Ni 1) in the framework of relativistic mean-field (RMF) theory with various parameter sets. Calculations show that this nucleus is a bound nucleus, because both of its proton separation energies are positive and its single particle levels are bound. This agrees with an experimental result. The calculated two-proton separation energy for Ni is found to be very close to the estimated value from the same experiment. The RMF calculations also show that the proton-rich nucleus Ni is spherical and Z = 28 is a good magic number. The variation of the spin-orbit splittings with proton excess is discussed in the context of RMF theory.