  A proper treatment of the resonant continuum is to take account of not only
the energy of the resonant state, but also its width. The effect of the
resonant states on pairing correlations is presented based on the relativistic
mean field theory plus Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer(BCS) approximation with a
constant pairing strength. The study is performed in an effective Lagrangian
with the parameter set NL3 for neutron rich even-even Ni isotopes. The results
show that the contribution of the proper treatment of the resonant continuum to
pairing correlations for those nuclei close to neutron drip line is important.
The pairing gaps, Fermi energies, pairing correlation energies, and binding
energies are considerably affected with a proper consideration of the width of
resonant states. The problem of an unphysical particle gas, which may appear in
the calculation of the traditional mean field plus BCS method for nuclei in the
vicinity of drip line could be well overcome when the pairing correlation is
performed by using the resonant states instead of the discretized states in the
continuum.
