arXiv subjects

Elena Litvinova

Publications and source records attributed to Elena Litvinova.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Recent advancements in the strongly coupled many-body theory for nuclear spectral computation

Some recent advancements of the nuclear many-body theory and selected results on nuclear giant and pygmy resonances are presented. The theory is compactly reviewed, with a special focus on the emergent scale of the quasiparticle-vibration coupling (qPVC), which carries the order parameter associated with the qPVC vertex, and an efficient treatment of the nuclear many-body problem organized around the qPVC hierarchy. Self-consistent numerical solutions of the relativistic Bethe-Salpeter-Dyson equation for the nuclear response function in medium-heavy nuclei are discussed. The presented update on the pygmy dipole resonance focuses on establishing the formation of its two-component structure as a result of the fragmentation of the low-energy dipole mode due to the qPVC and its mixing with the similarly fragmented giant dipole resonance. The centroid of the isoscalar giant monopole resonance is also linked to qPVC effects, particularly to its sensitivity to the coupling of the collective breathing mode to the lowest quadrupole vibrations, which is enhanced by quadrupole collectivity. The resolution of the long-standing "fluffiness" puzzle regarding the compressibility of open-shell tin isotopes is summarized. The recently developed thermal variant of the superfluid response theory is briefly introduced and continuously linked to the description of the isoscalar monopole response at finite temperature with the prospect of refining the temperature-dependent nuclear equation of state.

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arXiv2025

Response of superfluid fermions at finite temperature

A consistent finite-temperature microscopic theory for the response of strongly coupled superfluid fermionic systems is formulated. We start from the general many-body Hamiltonian with the vacuum (bare) two-fermion interaction and derive the equation of motion (EOM) for the thermally averaged two-time two-fermion correlation function, which determines the spectrum of the system under study. The superfluidity is introduced via the Bogoliubov transformation of the fermionic field operators, and the entire formalism is carried out in the basis of Bogoliubov's quasiparticles, keeping the complete 4x4 block matrix structure of the two-fermion EOM. Fully correlated static and dynamical interaction kernels of the resulting EOM are discussed. A special focus is then placed on the latter kernel, which is advanced to a factorized form, enabling a minimal truncation of the many-body problem while keeping important effects of emergent collectivity and mapping to the quasiparticle-vibration coupling (qPVC). As in the zero-temperature and non-superfluid cases, the qPVC can be associated with a new order parameter, qPVC vertex. In the thermal superfluid theory, the latter vertex, as well as the components of the dynamical kernel, acquire an extended form including thermally unblocked transition amplitudes.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Fragmentation patterns of nuclear response: low-spin giant resonances and soft modes

Nuclear resonances provide a rich and versatile testbed for exploring fundamental aspects of physics, particularly within the domain of strongly correlated many-body systems. The overarching goal of the theory is to develop a consistent and predictive framework that is (i) capable of a spectroscopically accurate description and (ii) sufficiently general to be applied across different energy scales and transferable to a wide range of complex systems. Thoroughly capturing emergent collective phenomena that arise in nuclear media is the central challenge for the theory, which is discussed in this contribution. It concentrates on the themes inspired and influenced by Angela Bracco's research, in particular, on the fragmentation patterns of the monopole and dipole responses of medium-heavy nuclei and associated open problems.

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arXiv2025

Fermionic equations of motion in strongly-correlated media: applications to the nuclear many-body problem

These notes summarise the lectures given at the International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi" in Summer 2024 in Varenna (Italy) about the strongly coupled quantum many-body theory and its applications to nuclear structure. The lectures present a rather short overview of the subject with an emphasis on the analytical aspects of the nuclear many-body problem, aiming at a deep understanding of the complexity of strongly coupled nucleonic states and emergent collective phenomena. The major pedagogical focus is recognizing how all the models describing nuclear dynamics follow from a unified model-independent framework formulated in the universal language of quantum field theory. In particular, connections between the classes of ab initio, density functional theory, and beyond mean-field approaches are made accessible. Approximations of varying complexity are discussed in applications to excited states of medium-heavy nuclei.

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arXiv2024

Response of strongly coupled fermions on classical and quantum computers

Studying the response of quantum systems is essential for gaining deeper insights into the fundamental nature of matter and its behavior in diverse physical contexts. Computation of nuclear response is critical for many applications, but its spectroscopically accurate description in medium-heavy nuclei in wide energy ranges remains particularly challenging because of the complex nature of nuclear quantum states in the high-level-density regime. Herein, we push the limits of configuration complexity in the classical computation of the nuclear response and present an algorithm with a quantum benefit for treating complex configurations. The classical computational method of approaching spectroscopic accuracy is implemented for medium-heavy nuclei and pioneered for the dipole response of 120Sn, while the quantum algorithm reaching the exact solution is realized for the Lipkin Hamiltonian to unravel the emergence of collectivity at strong coupling.

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arXiv2024

On the dynamical kernels of fermionic equations of motion in strongly-correlated media

Two-point fermionic propagators in strongly-correlated media are considered with an emphasis on the dynamical interaction kernels of their equations of motion (EOM). With the many-body Hamiltonian confined by a two-body interaction, the EOMs for the two-point fermionic propagators acquire the Dyson form and, before taking any approximation, the interaction kernels decompose into the static and dynamical (time-dependent) contributions. The latter translate to the energy-dependent and the former map to the energy-independent terms in the energy domain. We dwell particularly on the energy-dependent terms, which generate long-range correlations while making feedback on their short-range static counterparts. The origin, forms, and various approximations for the dynamical kernels of one-fermion and two-fermion propagators, most relevant in the intermediate-coupling regime, are discussed. Applications to the electromagnetic dipole response of $^{68,70}$Ni and low-energy quadrupole response of $^{114,116,124}$Sn are presented.

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arXiv2023

Quantum benefit of the quantum equation of motion for the strongly coupled many-body problem

We investigate the quantum equation of motion (qEOM), a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for computing excitation properties of a fermionic many-body system, with a particular emphasis on the strong-coupling regime. The method is designed as a stepping stone towards building more accurate solutions for strongly coupled fermionic systems, such as medium-heavy nuclei, using quantum algorithms to surpass the current barrier in classical computation. Approximations of increasing accuracy to the exact solution of the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick Hamiltonian with $N=8$ particles are studied on digital simulators and IBM quantum devices. Improved accuracy is achieved by applying operators of growing complexity to generate excitations above the correlated ground state, which is determined by the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE). We demonstrate explicitly that the qEOM exhibits a quantum benefit due to the independence of the number of required quantum measurements from the configuration complexity. Post-processing examination shows that quantum device errors are amplified by increasing configuration complexity and coupling strength. A detailed error analysis is presented, and error mitigation based on zero noise extrapolation is implemented.

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arXiv2023

Many-body theory for quasiparticle states in superfluid fermionic systems

We present a formalism for the fermionic quasiparticle propagator in a superfluid fermionic system. Starting from a general many-body hamiltonian confined by the two-body instantaneous interaction, the equation of motion for the fermionic propagator is obtained in the Dyson form. Before making any approximation, the interaction kernel is found to be decomposed into the static and dynamical (time-dependent) contributions, while the latter translates to the energy-dependent and the former maps to the energy-independent terms in the energy domain. The three-fermion correlation function being the heart of the dynamical part of the kernel is factorized into the two-fermion and one-fermion ones. With the relaxed particle number constraint, the normal propagator is coupled to the abnormal one via both the static and dynamical kernels, that is formalized by introducing the generalized quasiparticle propagator of the Gor'kov type. The dynamical kernel in the factorized form is associated with the quasiparticle-vibration coupling (QVC) with the vibrations unifying both the normal and pairing phonons. The QVC vertices are related to the variations of the Hamiltonian of the Bogoliubov quasiparticles, which can be obtained by the finite amplitude method.

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arXiv2023

Relativistic approach to the nuclear breathing mode

Microscopic theory of the nuclear response based on the relativistic meson-nucleon Lagrangian is applied to the description of the isoscalar giant monopole resonance (ISGMR) in a variety of nuclear systems. It is shown that the parameter-free inclusion of beyond-mean-field correlations of the quasiparticle-vibration coupling (qPVC) type in the leading approximation allows for a simultaneous realistic description of the ISGMR in nuclei of lead, tin, zirconium, and nickel mass regions, which is difficult on the mean-field level. The calculations employ the finite-range effective meson-nucleon interaction, which, in combination with the qPVC, has consistently demonstrated the ability to reliably describe many other nuclear structure phenomena. Systematic calculations of the isoscalar monopole response for nickel isotopes help reveal the central role of the coupling between the ISGMR and the low-energy quadrupole states in the placement of the ISGMR centroids.

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arXiv2022

Microscopic response theory for strongly-coupled superfluid fermionic systems

A consistent microscopic theory for the response of strongly-coupled superfluid fermionic systems is formulated. After defining the response as a two-point two-fermion correlation function in the basis of the Bogolyubov's quasiparticles, the equation of motion (EOM) method is applied using the most general fermionic Hamiltonian with a bare two-body interaction, also transformed to the quasiparticle space. As a superfluid extension of the case of the normal phase, the resulting EOM is of the Bethe-Salpeter-Dyson form with the static and dynamical interaction kernels, where the former determines the short-range correlations and the latter is responsible for the long-range ones. Both kernels as well as the entire EOM have the double dimension as compared to that of the normal phase. Non-perturbative approximations via the cluster decomposition of the dynamical kernel are discussed, with the major focus on a continuous derivation of the quasiparticle-phonon coupling variant of the latter kernel, where the phonons (vibrations) are composite correlated two-quasiparticle states unifying both the normal and pairing modes. The developed theory is adopted for nuclear structure applications, such as the nuclear response in various channels. In particular, the finite-amplitude method generalized beyond the quasiparticle random phase approximation, taking into account the quasiparticle-vibration coupling, is formulated for prospective calculations in non-spherical nuclei.

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arXiv2022

Simulating excited states of the Lipkin model on a quantum computer

We simulate the excited states of the Lipkin model using the recently proposed Quantum Equation of Motion (qEOM) method. The qEOM generalizes the EOM on classical computers and gives access to collective excitations based on quasi-boson operators $\hat{O}^\dagger_n(α)$ of increasing configuration complexity $α$. We show, in particular, that the accuracy strongly depends on the fermion to qubit encoding. Standard encoding leads to large errors, but the use of symmetries and the Gray code reduces the quantum resources and improves significantly the results on current noisy quantum devices. With this encoding scheme, we use IBM quantum machines to compute the energy spectrum for a system of $N=2, 3$ and $4$ particles and compare the accuracy against the exact solution. We found that the results of the approach with $α= 2$, an analog of the second random phase approximation (SRPA), are, in principle, more accurate than with $α= 1$, which corresponds to the random phase approximation (RPA), but the SRPA is more amenable to noise for large coupling strengths. Thus, the proposed scheme shows potential for achieving higher spectroscopic accuracy by implementations with higher configuration complexity, if a proper error mitigation method is applied.

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arXiv2022

Theory of nuclear collective vibrations

We review the theory of nuclear collective vibrations evolved over decades from phenomenological quasiclassical picture to sophisticated microscopic approaches. The major focus is put on the underlying microscopic mechanisms of emergent effects, which define the properties of giant resonances and soft modes. The response of atomic nuclei to electromagnetic and weak fields is discussed in detail. Astrophysical implications of the giant resonances and soft modes are outlined.

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arXiv2022

Many-body approach to superfluid nuclei in axial geometry

Starting from a general many-body fermionic Hamiltonian, we derive the equations of motion (EOM) for nucleonic propagators in a superfluid system. The resulting EOM is of the Dyson type formulated in the basis of Bogoliubov's quasiparticles. As the leading contributions to the dynamical kernel of this EOM in strongly-coupled regimes contain phonon degrees of freedom in various channels, an efficient method of calculating phonon's characteristics is required to successfully model these kernels. The traditional quasiparticle random phase approximation (QRPA) solvers are typically used for this purpose in nuclear structure calculations, however, they become very prohibitive in non-spherical geometries. In this work, by linking the notion of the quasiparticle-phonon vertex to the variation of the Bogoliubov's Hamiltonian, we show that the recently developed finite-amplitude method (FAM) can be efficiently employed to compute the vertices within the FAM-QRPA. To illustrate the validity of the method, calculations based on the relativistic density-dependent point-coupling Lagrangian are performed for the single-nucleon states in heavy and medium-mass nuclei with axial deformations. The cases of $^{38}$Si and $^{250}$Cf are presented and discussed.

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arXiv2021

Beyond-mean-field calculations of allowed and first-forbidden $β^-$ decays of $r$-process waiting-point nuclei

$β$-decay rates of neutron-rich nuclei, in particular those located at neutron shell closures, play a central role in simulations of the heavy-element nucleosynthesis and resulting abundance distributions. We present $β$-decay half-lives of even-even $N=82$ and $N=126$ $r$-process waiting-point nuclei calculated in the approach based on relativistic quasiparticle random phase approximation with quasiparticle-vibration coupling. The calculations include both allowed and first-forbidden transitions. In the $N=82$ chain, the quasiparticle-vibration coupling has an important impact close to stability, as it increases the contribution of Gamow-Teller modes and improves the agreement with the available data. In the $N=126$ chain, we find the decay to proceed dominantly via first-forbidden transitions, even when the coupling to vibrations is included.

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arXiv2021

Nuclear superfluidity at finite temperature

The equation of motion for the two-fermion two-time correlation function in the pairing channel is considered at finite temperature. Within the Matsubara formalism, the Dyson-type Bethe-Salpeter equation (Dyson-BSE) with the frequency-dependent interaction kernel is obtained. Similarly to the case of zero temperature, it is decomposed into the static and dynamical components, where the former is given by the contraction of the bare interaction with the two-fermion density and the latter is represented by the double contraction of the four-fermion two-time correlation function, or propagator, with two interaction matrix elements. The dynamical kernel with the four-body propagator, being formally exact, requires approximations to avoid generating prohibitively complicated hierarchy of equations. We focus on the approximation where the dynamical interaction kernel is truncated on the level of two-body correlation functions, neglecting the irreducible three-body and higher-rank correlations. Such a truncation leads to the dynamical kernel with the coupling between correlated fermionic pairs, which can be interpreted as emergent bosonic quasibound states, or phonons, of normal and superfluid nature. The latter ones are, thus, the mediators of the dynamical superfluid pairing. In this framework, we obtained the closed system of equations for the fermionic particle-hole and particle-particle propagators. This allows us to study the temperature dependence of the pairing gap beyond the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer approximation, that is implemented for medium-heavy nuclear systems. The cases of 68Ni and 44,46Ca are discussed in detail.

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arXiv2021

Nuclear Shell Structure in a Finite-Temperature Relativistic Framework

The shell evolution of neutron-rich nuclei with temperature is studied in a beyond-mean-field framework rooted in the meson-nucleon Lagrangian. The temperature-dependent Dyson equation with the dynamical kernel taking into account the particle-vibration coupling (PVC) is solved for the fermionic propagators in the basis of the thermal relativistic mean-field Dirac spinors. The calculations are performed for $^{68-78}$Ni in a broad range of temperatures $0 \leq T \leq 4$ MeV. The special focus is put on the fragmentation pattern of the single-particle states, which is further investigated within toy models in strongly truncated model spaces. Such models allow for quantifying the sensitivity of the fragmentation to the phonon frequencies, the PVC strength and to the mean-field level density. The model studies provide insights into the temperature evolution of the PVC mechanism in real nuclear systems under the conditions which may occur in astrophysical environments.

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arXiv2020

Many-body correlations in nuclear superfluidity

The two-fermion two-point correlation function in the pairing channel is discussed in the equation of motion framework. Starting from the bare two-fermion interaction, we derive the equation of motion for the two-fermion pair propagator in a strongly-correlated medium. The resulting equation is of the Dyson type with the kernel having a static and a one frequency dependent components and, thus, can be regarded as Dyson Bethe-Salpeter equation (Dyson-BSE). The many-body hierarchy generated by the dynamical interaction kernel is truncated on the level of two-body correlation functions, thus neglecting the explicit three-body and higher-rank correlations. The truncation is performed via a cluster expansion of the intermediate three-particle-one-hole correlation function irreducible in the particle-particle channel, that leads to the coupling between single fermions and emergent collective modes of excitation. The latter couplings are, thus, derived in terms of the exact mapping of the in-medium two-fermion correlation functions onto the domain of bosonic quasibound states (phonons) without introducing new parameters. The approach is applied to calculations of the pairing gaps in medium-mass nuclear systems, that include calcium, nickel and tin isotopic chains.

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arXiv2020

Impact of complex many-body correlations on electron capture in thermally excited nuclei around $^{78}$Ni

We link complex many-body correlations, which play a decisive role in the structural properties of atomic nuclei, to the electron capture occurring during star evolution. The recently developed finite-temperature response theory, taking into account the coupling between single-nucleon and collective degrees of freedom, is applied to spin-isospin transitions, which dominate the electron capture rates. Calculations are performed for $^{78}$Ni and for the surrounding even-even nuclei associated with a high-sensitivity region of the nuclear chart in the context of core-collapse supernova simulations. The obtained electron capture rates are compared to those of a simpler thermal quasiparticle random phase approximation (TQRPA), which is standardly used in such computations. The comparison indicates that correlations beyond TQRPA lead to significantly higher electron capture rates under the typical thermodynamical conditions.

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