Variations on a theme by Skyrme: A systematic study of adjustments of model parameters

We tabulate the atomic mass excesses and nuclear ground-state deformations of 8979 nuclei ranging from \(^{16}\)O to \(A=339\). The calculations are based on the finite-range droplet macroscopic model and the folded-Yukawa single-particle microscopic model. Relative to our 1981 mass table the current results are obtained with an improved macroscopic model, an improved pairing model with a new form for the effective-interaction pairing gap, and minimization of the ground-state energy with respect to additional shape degrees of freedom. The values of only 9 constants are determined directly from a least-squares adjustment to the ground-state masses of 1654 nuclei ranging from \(^{16}\)O to \(^{263}\)106 and to 28 fission-barrier heights. The error of the mass model is 0.669~MeV for the entire region of nuclei considered, but is only 0.448~MeV for the region above \(N=65\).