The isoscalar giant monopole resonances (ISGMR) and giant dipole resonances (ISGDR) in medium-heavy nuclei are investigated in the framework of HF+RPA and HF-BCS+QRPA with Skyrme effective interactions. It is found that pairing has little effect on these modes. It is also found that the coupling of the RPA states to 2p-2h configurations results in about (or less than) 1 MeV shifts of the resonance energies and at the same time gives the correct total widths. For the ISGMR, comparison with recent data leads to a value of nuclear matter compression modulus close to 215 MeV. However, a discrepancy between calculated and measured energies of the ISGDR in $^{208}$Pb is found and remains an open problem.
Isoscalar dipole strength distributions in spherical medium- and heavy-mass nuclei are calculated within random phase approximation (RPA) or quasiparticle RPA. Different Skyrme-type interactions corresponding to incompressibilities in the range 200 - 250 MeV are used. The results are discussed in comparison with existing data on isoscalar giant dipole resonances. Two main issues are raised, firstly the calculated giant resonance energies are somewhat higher than the observed ones, and secondly a sizable fraction of strength is predicted below 20 MeV which needs to be experimentally confirmed.
The Statistical Multifragmentation Model is modified to incorporate the Helmholtz free energies calculated in the finite temperature Thomas-Fermi approximation using Skyrme effective interactions. In this formulation, the density of the fragments at the freeze-out configuration corresponds to the equilibrium value obtained in the Thomas-Fermi approximation at the given temperature. The behavior of the nuclear caloric curve at constant volume is investigated in the micro-canonical ensemble and a plateau is observed for excitation energies between 8 and 10 MeV per nucleon. A kink in the caloric curve is found at the onset of this gas transition, indicating the existence of a small excitation energy region with negative heat capacity. In contrast to previous statistical calculations, this situation takes place even in this case in which the system is constrained to fixed volume. The observed phase transition takes place at approximately constant entropy. The charge distribution and other observables also turn out to be sensitive to the treatment employed in the calculation of the free energies and the fragments volumes at finite temperature, specially at high excitation energies. The isotopic distribution is also affected by this treatment, which suggests that this prescription may help to obtain information on the nuclear equation of state.
We review recent experimental and theoretical progress in understanding the microscopic details of clustering in light nuclei. We discuss recent experimental results on $alpha$-conjugate systems, molecular structures in neutron-rich nuclei, and constraints for ab initio theory. We then examine nuclear clustering in a wide range of theoretical methods, including the resonating group and generator coordinate methods, antisymmetrized molecular dynamics, Tohsaki-Horiuchi-Schuck-Ropke wave function and container model, no-core shell model methods, continuum quantum Monte Carlo, and lattice effective field theory.
A finite rank separable approximation for the particle-hole RPA calculations with Skyrme interactions is extended to take into account the pairing. As an illustration of the method energies and transition probabilities for the quadrupole and octupole excitations in some O, Ar, Sn and Pb isotopes are calculated. The values obtained within our approach are very close to those that were calculated within QRPA with the full Skyrme interaction. They are in reasonable agreement with experimental data.
A finite rank separable approximation for the quasiparticle RPA with Skyrme interactions is applied to study the low lying quadrupole and octupole states in some S isotopes and giant resonances in some spherical nuclei. It is shown that characteristics calculated within the suggested approach are in a good agreement with available experimental data.