No Arabic abstract
Sequences of experimental ground-state energies for both odd and even $A$ are mapped onto concave patterns cured from convexities due to pairing and/or shell effects. The same patterns, completed by a list of excitation energies, give numerical estimates of the grand potential $Omega(beta,mu)$ for a mixture of nuclei at low or moderate temperatures $T=beta^{-1}$ and at many chemical potentials $mu.$ The average nucleon number $<{bf A} >(beta,mu)$ then becomes a continuous variable, allowing extrapolations towards nuclear masses closer to drip lines. We study the possible concavity of several thermodynamical functions, such as the free energy and the average energy, as functions of $<{bf A} >.$ Concavity, which always occur for the free energy and is usually present for the average energy, allows easy interpolations and extrapolations providing upper and lower bounds, respectively, to binding energies. Such bounds define an error bar for the prediction of binding energies. Finally we show how concavity and universality are related in the theory of the nuclear density functional.
Sequences of experimental ground-state energies are mapped onto concave patterns cured from convexities due to pairing and/or shell effects. The same patterns, completed by a list of excitation energies, can be used to give numerical estimates of the grand potential $Omega(beta,mu)$ for a mixture of nuclei at low or moderate temperatures $T=beta^{-1}$ and at many chemical potentials $mu.$ The average nucleon number $<{bf A} >(beta,mu)$ then becomes a continuous variable, allowing extrapolations towards nuclear masses closer to drip lines. We study the possible concavity of several thermodynamical functions, such as the free energy and the average energy, as functions of $<{bf A} >.$ Concavity, when present in such functions, allows trivial interpolations and extrapolations providing upper and lower bounds, respectively, to binding energies. Such bounds define an error bar for the prediction of binding energies. An extrapolation scheme for such concave functions is tested. We conclude with numerical estimates of the binding energies of a few nuclei closer to drip lines.
We study a particular class of relativistic nuclear energy density functionals in which only nucleon degrees of freedom are explicitly used in the construction of effective interaction terms. Short-distance (high-momentum) correlations, as well as intermediate and long-range dynamics, are encoded in the medium (nucleon density) dependence of the strength functionals of an effective interaction Lagrangian. Guided by the density dependence of microscopic nucleon self-energies in nuclear matter, a phenomenological ansatz for the density-dependent coupling functionals is accurately determined in self-consistent mean-field calculations of binding energies of a large set of axially deformed nuclei. The relationship between the nuclear matter volume, surface and symmetry energies, and the corresponding predictions for nuclear masses is analyzed in detail. The resulting best-fit parametrization of the nuclear energy density functional is further tested in calculations of properties of spherical and deformed medium-heavy and heavy nuclei, including binding energies, charge radii, deformation parameters, neutron skin thickness, and excitation energies of giant multipole resonances.
The Coulomb exchange and correlation energy density functionals for electron systems are applied to nuclear systems. It is found that the exchange functionals in the generalized gradient approximation provide agreements with the exact-Fock energy with one adjustable parameter within a few dozen $ mathrm{keV} $ accuracy, whereas the correlation functionals are not directly applicable to nuclear systems due to the existence of the nuclear force.
We introduce a finite-range pseudopotential built as an expansion in derivatives up to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^3$LO) and we calculate the corresponding nonlocal energy density functional (EDF). The coupling constants of the nonlocal EDF, for both finite nuclei and infinite nuclear matter, are expressed through the parameters of the pseudopotential. All central, spin-orbit, and tensor terms of the pseudopotential are derived both in the spherical-tensor and Cartesian representation. At next-to-leading order (NLO), we also derive relations between the nonlocal EDF expressed in the spherical-tensor and Cartesian formalism. Finally, a simplified version of the finite-range pseudopotential is considered, which generates the EDF identical to that generated by a local potential.
Machine learning is employed to build an energy density functional for self-bound nuclear systems for the first time. By learning the kinetic energy as a functional of the nucleon density alone, a robust and accurate orbital-free density functional for nuclei is established. Self-consistent calculations that bypass the Kohn-Sham equations provide the ground-state densities, total energies, and root-mean-square radii with a high accuracy in comparison with the Kohn-Sham solutions. No existing orbital-free density functional theory comes close to this performance for nuclei. Therefore, it provides a new promising way for future developments of nuclear energy density functionals for the whole nuclear chart.