NUCLEAR THEORY, Vol. 29 eds. A. Georgieva, N. Minkov, Heron Press, Sofia Momentum distributions in medium and heavy exotic nuclei M.K. Gaidarov 1 , G.Z. Krumova 2 , P. Sarriguren 3 , A.N. Antonov 1 , M.V. Ivanov 1 , E. Moya de Guerra 4 1 Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy, Bulgarian Academy of Sci- ences, Sofia 1784, Bulgaria 2 University of Ruse, Ruse 7017, Bulgaria 3 Instituto de Estructura de la Materia, CSIC, Serrano 123, E-28006 Madrid, Spain 4 Departamento de Fisica At´ omica, Molecular y Nuclear, Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, E-28040 Madrid, Spain Abstract. Nucleon momentum distributions of even-even isotopes of Ni, Kr, and Sn are studied in the framework of deformed self-consistent mean-field Skyrme HF+BCS method, the theoretical approach based on the light-front dy- namics and the theoretical method based on the local density approximation. The isotopic sensitivities of the calculated neutron and proton momentum distri- butions are investigated together with the effects of pairing and nucleon-nucleon correlations. The role of deformation on the momentum distributions in even- even Kr isotopes is discussed. For comparison, the results for the momentum distribution in nuclear matter are also given. 1 Introduction Exotic nuclei are known to exhibit qualitatively new phenomena and provide a new testing ground for the understanding of quantum many-body science. It is a challenge for the nuclear theory to study entirely new nuclear topologies comprising, e.g. regions of nearly pure neutron matter and exotic nuclear shapes, new types and phases of nucleonic matter and others. The study of exotic nuclei is inspired by the recent development of radioac- tive ion beam facilities in GSI (Germany) [1] and RIKEN (Japan) [2, 3] that offer the worldwide unique opportunity to use electrons as probe particles in investigations of the structure of these nuclei. In Ref. [4] we studied charge form factors of light exotic nuclei ( 6,8 He, 11 Li, 14 Be, 17,19 B) using various the- oretical predictions of their charge densities. In Ref. [5] our calculations of the charge form factors of exotic nuclei were extended from light (He, Li) to medium and heavy nuclei (Ni, Kr, and Sn). For the Ni, Kr, and Sn isotopes the densi- ties have been obtained in the deformed self-consistent mean-field Hartree-Fock (HF)+BCS method with density-dependent (DD) Skyrme interaction [6–8]. We 1