Nuclear masses and fission barriers within the isospin-square liquid drop model

Abstract

New liquid drop model with the isospin-square dependence of the volume and surface energy terms is applied to reproduce experimentally known masses of nuclei with number of protons and neutrons larger or equal to twenty. The ground-state microscopic energy corrections are taken into account. In spite of the fact that the model contains only six adjustable parameters, the quality of mass reproduction is good, and it is comparable with other contemporary mass models. Also, the fission barrier heights of actinide nuclei evaluated using the topographical theorem of Myers and Swiatecki are close to the data.