The odd-even staggering of nuclear masses was recognized in the early days of nuclear physics. Recently, a similar effect was discovered in other finite fermion systems, such as ultrasmall metallic grains and metal clusters. It is believed that the staggering in nuclei and grains is primarily due to pairing correlations (superconductivity), while in clusters it is caused by the Jahn-Teller effect. We find that, for light and medium-mass nuclei, the staggering has two components. The first one originates from pairing while the second, comparable in magnitude, has its roots in the deformed mean field

A new strategy of fitting the coupling constants of the nuclear energy density functional is proposed, which shifts attention from ground-state bulk to single-particle properties. The latter are analyzed in terms of the bare single-particle energies and mass, shape, and spin core-polarization effects. Fit of the isoscalar spin-orbit and both isoscalar and isovector tensor coupling constants directly to the f 5/2 − f 7/2 spin-orbit splittings in 40 Ca, 56 Ni, and 48 Ca is proposed as a practical realization of this new programme. It is shown that this fit requires drastic changes in the isoscalar spin-orbit strength and the tensor coupling constants as compared to the commonly accepted values but it considerably and systematically improves basic single-particle properties including spin-orbit splittings and magic-gap energies. Impact of these changes on nuclear binding energies is also discussed.

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