arXiv subjects

E. Moya de Guerra

Publications and source records attributed to E. Moya de Guerra.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2021

Nuclear symmetry energy components and their ratio: A new approach within the coherent density fluctuation model

A new alternative approach to calculate the ratio of the surface to volume components of the nuclear symmetry energy is proposed in the framework of the coherent density fluctuation model (CDFM). A new expression (scheme II) for the ratio is derived consistently within the model. This expression appears in a form more direct and physically motivated than the expression (scheme I) that was used in our previous works within the CDFM and avoids preliminary assumptions and mathematical ambiguities in scheme I. The calculations are based on the Skyrme and Brueckner energy-density functionals for nuclear matter and on nonrelativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock method with realistic Bonn B and Bonn CD nucleon-nucleon potentials. The approach is applied to isotopic chains of Ni, Sn, and Pb nuclei using nuclear densities obtained in self-consistent Hartree-Fock+BCS calculations with SLy4 Skyrme effective interaction. The applicability of both schemes within the CDFM is demonstrated by a comparison of the results with the available empirical data and with results of other theoretical studies of the considered quantities. Although in some instances the results obtained for the studied ratio and the symmetry energy components are rather close in both schemes, the new scheme II leads to more realistic values that agree better with the empirical data and exhibits conceptual and operational advantages.

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arXiv2020

Nuclear shape transitions and elastic magnetic electron scattering

Backward elastic electron scattering from odd-A nuclear targets is characterized by magnetic form factors containing precise information on the nuclear structure. We study the sensitivity of the magnetic form factors to structural effects related to the evolution and shape transitions in both isotopic and isotonic chains. Calculations of magnetic form factors are performed in the plane-wave Born approximation. The nuclear structure is obtained from a deformed self-consistent mean-field calculation based on a Skyrme HF+BCS formalism. Collective effects are included in the cranking approximation, whereas nucleon-nucleon correlations are taken into account in the coherent density fluctuation model. The evolution of the magnetic form factors is found to exhibit signatures of shape transitions that show up in selected isotopic and isotonic chains involving both stable and unstable nuclei. Several cases are identified as suitable candidates for showing such fingerprints of shape transitions. A new generation of electron scattering experiments involving electron-radioactive beam colliders will be available in the near future, leading to a renewed interest in this field.

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arXiv2020

Proton and neutron skins and symmetry energy of mirror nuclei

The neutron skin of nuclei is an important fundamental property, but its accurate measurement faces many challenges. Inspired by charge symmetry of nuclear forces, the neutron skin of a neutron-rich nucleus is related to the difference between the charge radii of the corresponding mirror nuclei. We investigate this relation within the framework of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov method with Skyrme interactions. Predictions for proton skins are also made for several mirror pairs in the middle mass range. For the first time the correlation between the thickness of the neutron skin and the characteristics related with the density dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy is investigated simultaneously for nuclei and their corresponding mirror partners. As an example, the Ni isotopic chain with mass number $A=48-60$ is considered. These quantities are calculated within the coherent density fluctuation model using Brueckner and Skyrme energy-density functionals for isospin asymmetric nuclear matter with two Skyrme-type effective interactions, SkM* and SLy4. Results are also presented for the symmetry energy as a function of $A$ for a family of mirror pairs from selected chains of nuclei with $Z=20$, $N=14$, and $N=50$. The evolution curves show a similar behavior crossing at the $N=Z$ nucleus in each chain and a smooth growing deviation when $N\neq Z$ starts. Comparison of our results for the radii and skins with those from the calculations based on high-precision chiral forces is made.

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arXiv2020

Symmetry energy properties of neutron-rich nuclei from the coherent density fluctuation model applied to nuclear matter calculations with Bonn potentials

We derive the values of nuclear symmetry energy, its components, as well as pressure in finite nuclei at saturation density from their corresponding values in nuclear matter obtained in non-relativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock calculations with the realistic Bonn B and Bonn CD potentials using the coherent density fluctuation model in the framework of a self-consistent Skyrme-Hartree-Fock plus BCS method. We focus on three isotopic chains of spherical nuclei (Ni, Sn, and Pb) and compare our results with those obtained with an effective Brueckner density-dependent potential. The role of the three-body forces on the considered quantities is also studied and discussed.

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arXiv2019

Elastic magnetic electron scattering from deformed nuclei

Magnetic form factors corresponding to elastic electron scattering from odd-A nuclei are presented. The calculations are carried out in plane-wave Born approximation. The one-body properties are obtained in a deformed self-consistent mean-field calculation based on a Skyrme HF+BCS method. Collective effects are also included in the cranking approximation. Results on several stable nuclei are compared with the available experimental information. It is shown that a deformed formalism improves the agreement with experiment in deformed nuclei, while reproducing equally well spherical nuclei by taking properly the spherical limit of the deformed model and the effect of nucleon-nucleon correlations. Thus, the capability of the model to describe magnetic form factors is demonstrated. This opens the door to explore also unstable nuclei of particular interest that could be measured in future experiments on electron-radioactive beam colliders.

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arXiv2018

Temperature dependence of the volume and surface contributions to the nuclear symmetry energy within the coherent density fluctuation model

The temperature dependence of the volume and surface components of the nuclear symmetry energy (NSE) and their ratio is investigated in the framework of the local density approximation (LDA). The results of these quantities for finite nuclei are obtained within the coherent density fluctuation model (CDFM). The CDFM weight function is obtained using the temperature-dependent proton and neutron densities calculated through the HFBTHO code that solves the nuclear Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov problem by using the cylindrical transformed deformed harmonic-oscillator basis. We present and discuss the values of the volume and surface contributions to the NSE and their ratio obtained for the Ni, Sn, and Pb isotopic chains around double-magic $^{78}$Ni, $^{132}$Sn, and $^{208}$Pb nuclei. The results for the $T$-dependence of the considered quantities are compared with estimations made previously for zero temperature showing the behavior of the NSE components and their ratio, as well as with the available experimental data. The sensitivity of the results on various forms of the density dependence of the symmetry energy is studied. We confirm the existence of `kinks' of these quantities as functions of the mass number at $T=0$ MeV for the double closed-shell nuclei $^{78}$Ni and $^{132}$Sn and the lack of `kinks' for the Pb isotopes, as well as the disappearance of these kinks as the temperature increases.

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arXiv2017

Temperature dependence of the symmetry energy and neutron skins in Ni, Sn, and Pb isotopic chains

The temperature dependence of the symmetry energy for isotopic chains of even-even Ni, Sn, and Pb nuclei is investigated in the framework of the local density approximation (LDA). The Skyrme energy density functional with two Skyrme-class effective interactions, SkM* and SLy4, is used in the calculations. The temperature-dependent proton and neutron densities are calculated through the HFBTHO code that solves the nuclear Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov problem by using the cylindrical transformed deformed harmonic-oscillator basis. In addition, two other density distributions of $^{208}$Pb, namely the Fermi-type density determined within the extended Thomas-Fermi (TF) method and symmetrized-Fermi local density obtained within the rigorous density functional approach, are used. The kinetic energy densities are calculated either by the HFBTHO code or, for a comparison, by the extended TF method up to second order in temperature (with $T^{2}$ term). Alternative ways to calculate the symmetry energy coefficient within the LDA are proposed. The results for the thermal evolution of the symmetry energy coefficient in the interval $T=0-4$ MeV show that its values decrease with temperature. The temperature dependence of the neutron and proton root-mean-square radii and corresponding neutron skin thickness is also investigated, showing that the effect of temperature leads mainly to a substantial increase of the neutron radii and skins, especially in the more neutron-rich nuclei, a feature that may have consequences on astrophysical processes and neutron stars.

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arXiv2016

Warm dark matter sterile neutrinos in electron capture and beta decay spectra

We briefly review the motivation to search for sterile neutrinos in the keV mass scale, as dark matter candidates, and the prospects to find them in beta decay or electron capture spectra, with a global perspective. We describe the fundamentals of the neutrino flavor-mass eigenstate mismatch that opens the possibility of detecting sterile neutrinos in such ordinary nuclear processes. Results are shown and discussed for the effect of heavy neutrino emission in electron capture in Holmium 163 and in two isotopes of Lead, 202 and 205, as well as in the beta decay of Tritium. We study the de-excitation spectrum in the considered cases of electron capture and the charged lepton spectrum in the case of Tritium beta decay. For each of these cases, we define ratios of integrated transition rates over different regions of the spectrum under study, and give new results that may guide and facilitate the analysis of possible future measurements, paying particular attention to forbidden transitions in Lead isotopes.

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arXiv2016

Nuclear structure calculations for two-neutrino double-beta decay

We study the two-neutrino double-beta decay in 76Ge, 116Cd, 128Te, 130Te, and 150Nd, as well as the two Gamow-Teller branches that connect the double-beta decay partners with the states in the intermediate nuclei. We use a theoretical microscopic approach based on a deformed selfconsistent mean field with Skyrme interactions including pairing and spin-isospin residual forces, which are treated in a proton-neutron quasiparticle random-phase approximation. We compare our results for Gamow-Teller strength distributions with experimental information obtained from charge-exchange reactions. We also compare our results for the two-neutrino double-beta decay nuclear matrix elements with those extracted from the measured half-lives. Both single-state and low-lying-state dominance hypotheses are analyzed theoretically and experimentally making use of recent data from charge-exchange reactions and beta decay of the intermediate nuclei.

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arXiv2016

Volume and surface contributions to the nuclear symmetry energy within the coherent density fluctuation model

The volume and surface components of the nuclear symmetry energy (NSE) and their ratio are calculated within the coherent density fluctuation model (CDFM). The estimations use the results of the model for the NSE in finite nuclei based on the Brueckner energy-density functional for nuclear matter. In addition, we present results for the NSE and its volume and surface contributions obtained by using the Skyrme energy-density functional. The CDFM weight function is obtained using the proton and neutron densities from the self-consistent HF+BCS method with Skyrme interactions. We present and discuss the values of the volume and surface contributions to the NSE and their ratio obtained for the Ni, Sn, and Pb isotopic chains studying their isotopic sensitivity. The results are compared with estimations of other approaches which have used available experimental data on binding energies, neutron-skin thicknesses, excitation energies to isobaric analog states (IAS) and also with results of other theoretical methods.

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arXiv2015

Neutral current quasielastic (anti)neutrino scattering beyond the Fermi gas model at MiniBooNE and BNL kinematics

Neutral current quasielastic (anti)neutrino scattering cross sections on a $^{12}$C target are analyzed using a realistic spectral function $S(p,E)$ that gives a scaling function in accordance with the ($e,e'$) scattering data. The spectral function accounts for the nucleon-nucleon (NN) correlations by using natural orbitals (NOs) from the Jastrow correlation method and has a realistic energy dependence. The standard value of the axial mass $M_A= 1.032$ GeV is used in all calculations. The role of the final-state interaction (FSI) on the spectral and scaling functions, as well as on the cross sections is accounted for. A comparison of the calculations with the empirical data of the MiniBooNE and BNL experiments is performed. Our results are analyzed in comparison with those when NN correlations are not included, and also with results from other theoretical approaches, such as the relativistic Fermi gas (RFG), the relativistic mean field (RMF), the relativistic Green's function (RGF), as well as with the SuperScaling Approach (SuSA) based on the analysis of quasielastic electron scattering.

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arXiv2014

Testing nuclear models via neutrino scattering

Recent progresses on the relativistic modeling of neutrino-nucleus reactions are presented and the results are compared with high precision experimental data in a wide energy range.

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arXiv2014

Ground-state properties and symmetry energy of neutron-rich and neutron-deficient Mg isotopes

A comprehensive study of various ground-state properties of neutron-rich and neutron-deficient Mg isotopes with $A$=20-36 is performed in the framework of the self-consistent deformed Skyrme-Hartree-Fock plus BCS method. The correlation between the skin thickness and the characteristics related with the density dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy is investigated for this isotopic chain following the theoretical approach based on the coherent density fluctuation model and using the Brueckner energy-density functional. The results of the calculations show that the behavior of the nuclear charge radii and the nuclear symmetry energy in the Mg isotopic chain is closely related to the nuclear deformation. We also study, within our theoretical scheme, the emergence of an "island of inversion" at neutron-rich $^{32}$Mg nucleus, that was recently proposed from the analyses of spectroscopic measurements of $^{32}$Mg low-lying energy spectrum and the charge rms radii of all magnesium isotopes in the $sd$ shell.

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arXiv2013

Charged-current quasielastic neutrino cross sections on $^{12}$C with realistic spectral and scaling functions

Charge-current quasielastic (CCQE) (anti)neutrino scattering cross sections on a $^{12}$C target are analyzed using a spectral function $S(p,{\cal E})$ that gives a scaling function in accordance with the ($e,e'$) scattering data. The spectral function accounts for the nucleon-nucleon (NN) correlations, it has a realistic energy dependence and natural orbitals (NO's) from the Jastrow correlation method are used in its construction. In all calculations the standard value of the axial mass $M_A= 1.032$ GeV/c$^2$ is used. The results are compared with those when NN correlations are not included, as in the Relativistic Fermi Gas (RFG) model, or when harmonic-oscillator (HO) single-particle wave functions are used instead of NO's. The role of the final-state interactions (FSI) on the theoretical spectral and scaling functions, as well as on the cross sections is accounted for. A comparison of the results for the cases with and without FSI, as well as to results from the phenomenological scaling function obtained from the superscaling analysis (SuSA) is carried out. Our calculations based on the impulse approximation (IA) underpredict the MiniBooNE data, but agree with the data from the NOMAD experiment. The possible missing ingredients in the considered theoretical models are discussed.

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arXiv2012

Role of Sterile Neutrino Warm Dark Matter in Rhenium and Tritium Beta Decays

Sterile neutrinos with mass in the range of one to a few keV are important as extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics and are serious dark matter (DM) candidates. This DM mass scale (warm DM) is in agreement with both cosmological and galactic observations. We study the role of a keV sterile neutrino through its mixing with a light active neutrino in Rhenium 187 and Tritium beta decays. We pinpoint the energy spectrum of the beta particle, 0 < T_e < (Q_{beta} - m_s), as the region where a sterile neutrino could be detected and where its mass m_s could be measured. This energy region is at least 1 keV away rom the region suitable to measure the mass of the light active neutrino, located near the endpoint Q_{beta} . The emission of a keV sterile neutrino in a beta decay could show up as a small kink in the spectrum of the emitted beta particle. With this in view, we perform a careful calculation of the Rhenium and Tritium beta spectra and estimate the size of this perturbation by means of the dimensionless ratio R of the sterile neutrino to the active neutrino contributions. We comment on the possibility of searching for sterile neutrino signatures in two experiments which are currently running at present, MARE and KATRIN, focused on the Rhenium 187 and Tritium beta decays respectively.

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arXiv2012

Symmetry energy of deformed neutron-rich nuclei

The symmetry energy, the neutron pressure and the asymmetric compressibility of deformed neutron-rich even-even nuclei are calculated on the examples of Kr and Sm isotopes within the coherent density fluctuation model using the symmetry energy as a function of density within the Brueckner energy-density functional. The correlation between the thickness of the neutron skin and the characteristics related with the density dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy is investigated for isotopic chains of these nuclei in the framework of the self-consistent Skyrme-Hartree-Fock plus BCS method. Results for an extended chain of Pb isotopes are also presented. A remarkable difference is found in the trend followed by the different isotopic chains: the studied correlations reveal a smoother behavior in the Pb case than in the other cases. We also notice that the neutron skin thickness obtained for $^{208}$Pb with SLy4 force is found to be in a good agreement with recent data.

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arXiv2012

Superscaling predictions for neutrino-induced charged-current charged pion production at MiniBooNE

Superscaling approximation (SuSA) predictions to neutrino-induced charged-current charged pion production in the Δ-resonance region are explored under MiniBooNE experimental conditions. The results obtained within SuSA for the flux-averaged double-differential cross sections of the π+ production for the ν_μ+CH_2 reaction as a function of the muon kinetic energy and of the scattering angle, the cross sections averaged over the angle, the total cross section for the π+ production, as well as CC1π+ to CCQE cross section ratio are compared with the corresponding MiniBooNE experimental data. The SuSA predictions are in good agreement with data on neutrino flux average cross-sections, but a somewhat different dependence on the neutrino energy is predicted than the one resulting from the experimental analysis.

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arXiv2011

Surface properties of neutron-rich exotic nuclei: A source for studying the nuclear symmetry energy

We study the correlation between the thickness of the neutron skin in finite nuclei and the nuclear symmetry energy for isotopic chains of even-even Ni, Sn, and Pb nuclei in the framework of the deformed self-consistent mean-field Skyrme HF+BCS method. The symmetry energy, the neutron pressure and the asymmetric compressibility in finite nuclei are calculated within the coherent density fluctuation model using the symmetry energy as a function of density within the Brueckner energy-density functional. The mass dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy and the neutron skin thickness are also studied together with the role of the neutron-proton asymmetry. A correlation between the parameters of the equation of state (symmetry energy and its density slope) and the neutron skin is suggested in the isotopic chains of Ni, Sn, and Pb nuclei.

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