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Abstract

Abstract We present a systematic study of nuclear ground-state properties obtained with the Skyrme quark–meson coupling (SQMC) energy density functional and compare them with results from the SLy4d Skyrme parameterisation. The SQMC functional is constructed using the quark–meson coupling (QMC) model, which incorporates the internal quark structure of the nucleon and results in a significant reduction in the number of free parameters. We investigate binding energies, two-nucleon separation energies, charge radii, and quadrupole deformations across a broad range of nuclei. Particular attention is devoted to the isovector dependence of the spin–orbit interaction derived within the QMC model, and its impact on the binding energies of neutron-rich nuclei relevant to the r-process. We find that the SQMC functional provides a reasonable description of nuclear ground-state properties in comparison with SLy4d.