No Arabic abstract
The energy density functional (EDF) method is very widely used in nuclear physics, and among the various existing functionals those based on the relativistic Hartree (RH) approximation are very popular because the exchange contributions (Fock terms) are numerically rather onerous to calculate. Although it is possible to somehow mock up the effects of meson-induced exchange terms by adjusting the meson-nucleon couplings, the lack of Coulomb exchange contributions hampers the accuracy of predictions. In this note, we show that the Coulomb exchange effects can be easily included with a good accuracy in a perturbative approach. Therefore, it would be desirable for future relativistic EDF models to incorporate Coulomb exchange effects, at least to some order of perturbation.
We present preliminary results obtained with a finite-range two-body pseudopotential complemented with zero-range spin-orbit and density-dependent terms. After discussing the penalty function used to adjust parameters, we discuss predictions for binding energies of spherical nuclei calculated at the mean-field level, and we compare them with those obtained using the standard Gogny D1S finite-range effective interaction.
Background: Mean-field methods based on an energy density functional (EDF) are powerful tools used to describe many properties of nuclei in the entirety of the nuclear chart. The accuracy required on energies for nuclear physics and astrophysics applications is of the order of 500 keV and much effort is undertaken to build EDFs that meet this requirement. Purpose: The mean-field calculations have to be accurate enough in order to preserve the accuracy of the EDF. We study this numerical accuracy in detail for a specific numerical choice of representation for the mean-field equations that can accommodate any kind of symmetry breaking. Method: The method that we use is a particular implementation of 3-dimensional mesh calculations. Its numerical accuracy is governed by three main factors: the size of the box in which the nucleus is confined, the way numerical derivatives are calculated and the distance between the points on the mesh. Results: We have examined the dependence of the results on these three factors for spherical doubly-magic nuclei, neutron-rich $^{34}$Ne, the fission barrier of $^{240}$Pu and isotopic chains around Z = 50. Conclusions: Mesh calculations offer the user extensive control over the numerical accuracy of the solution scheme. By making appropriate choices for the numerical scheme the achievable accuracy is well below the model uncertainties of mean-field methods.
We investigate the relativistic mean field theory of nuclear matter at finite temperature and baryon density taking into account of nonlinear statistical effects, characterized by power-law quantum distributions. The analysis is performed by requiring the Gibbs conditions on the global conservation of baryon number and electric charge fraction. We show that such nonlinear statistical effects play a crucial role in the equation of state and in the formation of mixed phase also for small deviations from the standard Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics.
The Physical origin of the nuclear symmetry energy is studied within the relativistic mean field (RMF) theory. Based on the nuclear binding energies calculated with and without mean isovector potential for several isobaric chains we conform earlier Skyrme-Hartree-Fock result that the nuclear symmetry energy strength depends on the mean level spacing $epsilon (A)$ and an effective mean isovector potential strength $kappa (A)$. A detaied analysis of isospin dependence of the two components contributing to the nuclear symmetry energy reveals a quadratic dependence due to the mean-isoscalar potential, $simepsilon T^2$, and, completely unexpectedly, the presence of a strong linear component $simkappa T(T+1+epsilon/kappa)$ in the isovector potential. The latter generates a nuclear symmetry energy in RMF theory that is proportional to $E_{sym}sim T(T+1)$ at variance to the non-relativistic calculation. The origin of the linear term in RMF theory needs to be further explored.
Beyond mean-field methods are very successful tools for the description of large-amplitude collective motion for even-even atomic nuclei. The state-of-the-art framework of these methods consists in a Generator Coordinate Method based on angular-momentum and particle-number projected triaxially deformed Hatree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) states. The extension of this scheme to odd-mass nuclei is a long-standing challenge. We present for the first time such an extension, where the Generator Coordinate space is built from self-consistently blocked one-quasiparticle HFB states. One of the key points for this success is that the same Skyrme interaction is used for the mean-field and the pairing channels, thus avoiding problems related to the violation of the Pauli principle. An application to 25Mg illustrates the power of our method, as agreement with experiment is obtained for the spectrum, electromagnetic moments, and transition strengths, for both positive and negative parity states and without the necessity for effective charges or effective moments. Although the effective interaction still requires improvement, our study opens the way to systematically describe odd-A nuclei throughout the nuclear chart.