Pairing in exotic and in stable nuclei

The exchange of low-lying collective vibrations between pairs of nucleons moving in time reversal states close to the Fermi energy provides a conspicuous contribution to the nuclear pairing interaction, which accounts for 30-50% of the pairing gap in the case of nuclei along the stability valley, and to essentially all of the pairing correlations of the most loosely bound nucleons in the case of halo nuclei.