Method to circumvent the neutron-gas problem in the BCS treatment for nuclei far from stability

Extending the Kruppa's prescription for the continuum level density, we have recently improved the BCS method with seniority-type pairing force in such a way that the effects of discretized unbound states are properly taken into account for finite depth single-particle potentials. In this paper, it is further shown, by employing the Woods-Saxon potential, that the calculation of spatial observables, such as nuclear radius, converges as increasing the basis size in the harmonic oscillator expansion. Namely the disastrous problem of a "particle gas" surrounding nucleus in the BCS treatment can be circumvented. In spite of its simplicity, the new treatment gives similar results to those by more elaborate Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov calculations, e.g., it even mimics the pairing antihalo effect. The obtained results as well as the reason of convergence in the new method are investigated by a variant of the Thomas-Fermi approximation within the limited phase space which corresponds to the harmonic oscillator basis truncation.