THE EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE IN SPHERICAL AND DEFORMED NUCLEI IN THE DHB APPROXIMATION
We present a DHB approximation for excited hot nuclei and calculate the pairing gaps, binding energies, entropy and radii of several spherical and deformed nuclei. We show that the binding energy decreases as the temperature increases, as we would expect from the positive contribution of the thermal energy of the nucleons. The neutron, proton and charge radii of spherical nuclei increase as the temperature increases, while for the deformed 168 Er nucleus these quantities decrease up to T = 2 MeV , the temperature at which the deformation disappears, and increase above this temperature. The pairing interaction is taken into account self-consistently and studied as a function of the temperature: for the even Tin isotopes, the mean value of the neutron pairing gap is almost zero already at T = 1 MeV .