Neutron drops and neutron pairing energy

The ground state energy of a six-neutron drop is computed with variational and Green close-quote s function Monte Carlo methods using the Argonne v18 two-nucleon and the Urbana three-nucleon potentials. Combined with earlier results from investigations of the drops 8n and 7n, this energy gives a 1p-shell pairing energy of (1.8±0.4)MeV. The generalized Skyrme effective interaction discussed in the earlier work is applied to these nuclei by calculating, for the open-shell drops 7n and 6n, the matrix elements of the Skyrme t matrix directly for the states involved. The pairing energy obtained is 1.50 MeV, in reasonable agreement with the accurate calculations. copyright 1997 The American Physical Society