arXiv subjects

G. F. Bertsch

Publications and source records attributed to G. F. Bertsch.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Time-dependent density functional theory for strong electromagnetic fields in crystalline solids

We apply the coupled dynamics of time-dependent density functional theory and Maxwell equations to the interaction of intense laser pulses with crystalline silicon. As a function of electromagnetic field intensity, we see several regions in the response. At the lowest intensities, the pulse is reflected and transmitted in accord with the dielectric response, and the characteristics of the energy deposition is consistent with two-photon absorption. The absorption process begins to deviate from that at laser intensities ~ 10^13 W/cm^2, where the energy deposited is of the order of 1 eV per atom. Changes in the reflectivity are seen as a function of intensity. When it passes a threshold of about 3 \times 1012 W/cm2, there is a small decrease. At higher intensities, above 2 \times 10^13 W/cm^2, the reflectivity increases strongly. This behavior can be understood qualitatively in a model treating the excited electron-hole pairs as a plasma.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2011

Nuclear correlations and the r-process

We show that long-range correlations for nuclear masses have a significant effect on the synthesis of heavy elements by the r-process. As calculated by Delaroche et al. [1], these correlations suppress magic number effects associated with minor shells. This impacts the calculated abundances before the third r-process peak (at mass number A~195), where the abundances are low and form a trough. This trough and the position of the third abundance peak are strongly affected by the masses of nuclei in the transition region between deformed and spherical. Based on different astrophysical environments, our results demonstrate that a microscopic theory of nuclear masses including correlations naturally smoothens the separation energies, thus reducing the trough and improving the agreement with observed solar system abundances.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2011

Global systematics of octupole excitations in even-even nuclei

We present a computational methodology for a theory of the lowest octupole excitations applicable to all even-even nuclei beyond the lightest. The theory is the well-known generator-coordinate extension (GCM) of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov self-consistent mean field theory (HFB). We use the discrete-basis Hill-Wheel method (HW) to compute the wave functions with an interaction from the Gogny family of Hamiltonians. Comparing to the compiled experimental data on octupole excitations, we find that the performance of the theory depends on the deformation characteristics of the nucleus. For nondeformed nuclei, the theory reproduces the energies to about 20 % apart from an overall scale factor of about 1.6. The performance is somewhat poorer for (quadrupole) deformed nuclei, and for both together the dispersion of the scaled energies about the experimental values is about 25 %. This compares favorably with the performance of similar theories of the quadrupole excitations. Nuclei having static octupole deformations in HFB form a special category. These nuclei have the smallest measured octupole excitation energies as well as the smallest predicted energies. However, in these cases the energies are seriously underpredicted by the theory. We find that a simple two-configuration approximation, the Minimization After Projection method, (MAP) is almost as accurate as the full HW treatment, provided that the octupole-deformed nuclei are omitted from the comparison. This article is accompanied by a tabulation of the predicted octupole excitations for 818 nuclei extending from dripline to dripline, computed with several variants of the Gogny interaction.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2011

Mixed-Spin Pairing Condensates in Heavy Nuclei

We show that the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations for nuclear ground-state wave functions support solutions in which the condensate has a mixture of spin-singlet and spin-triplet pairing. We find that such mixed-spin condensates do not occur when there are equal numbers of neutrons and protons, but only when there is an isospin imbalance. Using a phenomenological Hamiltonian, we predict that such nuclei may occur in the physical region within the proton dripline. We also solve the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations with variable constraints on the spin-singlet and spin-triplet pairing amplitudes. For nuclei that exhibit this new pairing behavior, the resulting energy surface can be rather soft, suggesting that there may be low-lying excitations associated with the spin mixing.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2011

Application of the gradient method to Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory

A computer code is presented for solving the equations of Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) theory by the gradient method, motivated by the need for efficient and robust codes to calculate the configurations required by extensions of HFB such as the generator coordinate method. The code is organized with a separation between the parts that are specific to the details of the Hamiltonian and the parts that are generic to the gradient method. This permits total flexibility in choosing the symmetries to be imposed on the HFB solutions. The code solves for both even and odd particle number ground states, the choice determined by the input data stream. Application is made to the nuclei in the $sd$-shell using the USDB shell-model Hamiltonian.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2010

Numeric and symbolic evaluation of the pfaffian of general skew-symmetric matrices

Evaluation of pfaffians arises in a number of physics applications, and for some of them a direct method is preferable to using the determinantal formula. We discuss two methods for the numerical evaluation of pfaffians. The first is tridiagonalization based on Householder transformations. The main advantage of this method is its numerical stability that makes unnecessary the implementation of a pivoting strategy. The second method considered is based on Aitken's block diagonalization formula. It yields to a kind of LU (similar to Cholesky's factorization) decomposition (under congruence) of arbitrary skew-symmetric matrices that is well suited both for the numeric and symbolic evaluations of the pfaffian. Fortran subroutines (FORTRAN 77 and 90) implementing both methods are given. We also provide simple implementations in Python and Mathematica for purpose of testing, or for exploratory studies of methods that make use of pfaffians.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2010

Magnetic circular dichroism in real-time time-dependent density functional theory

We apply the adiabatic time-dependent density functional theory to magnetic ci the real-space, real-time computational method. The standard formulas for the MCD response and its A and B terms are derived from the observables in the time-dependent wave function. We find the real time method is well suited for calculating the overall spectrum, particularly at higher excitation energies where individual excited states are numerous and overlapping. The MCD sum rules are derived and interpreted in the real-time formalism; we find that they are very useful for normalization purposes and assessing the accuracy of the theory. The method is applied to MCD spectrum of C-60 using the adiabatic energy functional from the local density approximation. The theory correctly predicts the signs of the A and B terms for the lowest allowed excitations. However, the magnitudes of the terms only show qualitative agreement with experiment.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2010

Effective 3-Body Interaction for Mean-Field and Density-Functional Theory

Density functionals for nuclei usually include an effective 3-body interaction that depends on a fractional power of the density. Using insights from the many-body theory of the low-density two-component Fermi gas, we consider a new, nonlocal, form for the energy functional that is consistent with the Fock space representation of interaction operators. In particular, there is a unique spatially nonlocal generalization of the contact form of the interaction that preserves the density-to-the-seven-thirds dependence required by the many-body theory. We calculate the ground state energies for particles in a harmonic trap using the nonlocal induced 3-body interaction, and compare them to numerically accurate Green's Function Monte Carlo calculations. Using no free parameters, we find that a nonlocality in the space domain provides a better description of the weak-coupling regime than the local-density approximation.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2010

Number-conserving theory of nuclear pairing gaps: a global assessment

We study odd-even mass staggering of nuclei, also called pairing gaps, using a Skyrme self-consistent mean-field theory and a numerically exact treatment of the pairing Hamiltonian. We find that the configuration-space Monte Carlo method proposed by Cerf and Martin offers a practical computational procedure to carry out the numerical solutions in large-dimensional model spaces. Refitting the global strength of the pairing interaction for 443 neutron pairing gaps in our number-conserving treatment, we find the correction to the pairing correlation energies and pairing gaps to have rms values of 0.6 MeV and 0.12 MeV, respectively. The exact treatment provides a significant improvement in the fit to experimental gaps, although it is partially masked by a larger rms error due to deficiencies in other aspects of the theory such as the mean-field energy functional.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2010

Ab initio theory of coherent phonon generation by laser excitation

We show that time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) is applicable to coherent optical phonon generation by intense laser pulses in solids. The two mechanisms invoked in phenomenological theories, namely impulsively stimulated Raman scattering and displacive excitation, are present in the TDDFT. Taking the example of crystalline Si, we find that the theory reproduces the phenomena observed experimentally: dependence on polarization, strong growth at the direct band gap, and the change of phase from below to above the band gap. We conclude that the TDDFT offers a predictive ab initio framework to treat coherent optical phonon generation.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2009

Structure of even-even nuclei using a mapped collective Hamiltonian and the D1S Gogny interaction

A systematic study of low energy nuclear structure at normal deformation is carried out using the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory extended by the Generator Coordinate Method and mapped onto a 5-dimensional collective quadrupole Hamiltonian. Results obtained with the Gogny D1S interaction are presented from dripline to dripline for even-even nuclei with proton numbers Z=10 to Z=110 and neutron numbers N less than 200. The properties calculated for the ground states are their charge radii, 2-particle separation energies, correlation energies, and the intrinsic quadrupole shape parameters. For the excited spectroscopy, the observables calculated are the excitation energies and quadrupole as well as monopole transition matrix elements. We examine in this work the yrast levels up to J=6, the lowest excited 0^+ states, and the two next yrare 2^+ states. The theory is applicable to more than 90% of the nuclei which have tabulated measurements. The data set of the calculated properties of 1712 even-even nuclei, including spectroscopic properties for 1693 of them, are provided in CEA website and EPAPS repository with this article \cite{epaps}.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2009

Pairing in 4-component fermion systems: the bulk limit of SU(4)-symmetric Hamiltonians

Fermion systems with more than two components can exhibit pairing condensates of much more complex structure than the well-known single BCS condensate of spin-up and spin-down fermions. In the framework of the exactly solvable SO(8) Richardson-Gaudin model with SU(4)-symmetric Hamiltonians, we show that the BCS approximation remains valid in the thermodynamic limit of large systems for describing the ground state energy and the canonical and quasiparticle excitation gaps. Correlations beyond BCS pairing give rise to a spectrum of collective excitations, but these do not affect the bulk energy and quasiparticle gaps.

math-ph↗

arXiv2009

Spin-triplet pairing in large nuclei

The nuclear pairing condensate is expected to change character from spin-singlet to spin-triplet when the nucleus is very large and the neutron and proton numbers $Z,N$ are equal. We investigate the transition between these two phases within the framework of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equations, using a zero-range interaction to generate the pairing. We confirm that extremely large nucleus would indeed favor triplet pairing condensates, with the Hamiltonian parameters taken from known systematics. The favored phase is found to depend on the specific orbitals at the Fermi energy. The smallest nuclei with a well-developed spin-triplet condensate are in the mass region A ~ 130-140.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2009

Conductance of a single-atom carbon chain with graphene leads

We study the conductance of an interconnect between two graphene leads formed by a single-atom carbon chain. Its dependence on the chemical potential and the number of atoms in the chain is qualitatively different from that in the case of normal metal leads. Electron transport proceeds via narrow resonant states in the wire. The latter arise due to strong reflection at the junctions between the chain and the leads, which is caused by the small density of states in the leads at low energy. The energy dependence of the transmission coefficient near resonance is asymmetric and acquires a universal form at small energies. We find that in the case of leads with the zigzag edges the dispersion of the edge states has a significant effect on the device conductance.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2009

Model space truncation in shell-model fits

We carry out an interacting shell-model study of binding energies and spectra in the $sd$-shell nuclei to examine the effect of truncation of the shell-model spaces. Starting with a Hamiltonian defined in a larger space and truncating to the $sd$ shell, the binding energies are strongly affected by the truncation, but the effect on the excitation energies is an order of magnitude smaller. We then refit the matrix elements of the two-particle interaction to compensate for the space truncation, and find that it is easy to capture 90% of the binding energy shifts by refitting a few parameters. With the full parameter space of the two-particle Hamiltonian, we find that both the binding energies and the excitation energy can be fitted with remaining residual error about 5% of the average error from the truncation. Numerically, the rms initial error associated with our Hamiltonian is 3.4 MeV and the remaining residual error is 0.16 MeV. This is comparable to the empirical error found in $sd$-shell interacting shell model fits to experimental data\cite{br06}.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2009

Suppression of isoscalar pairing

The short-range nuclear attraction is stronger in the isoscalar channel than in the isovector channel, as evidenced by the existence of the deuteron and not the dineutron. Nevertheless, apart from light N=Z nuclei, pairing is only seen in the isovector channel. This is explained by the effect of the strong spin-orbit splitting on the single-particle energies. A semiquantitative argument is presented treating the high-j orbitals at the Fermi surface as plane waves on a two-dimensional sheet.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2008

Whence the odd-even staggering in nuclear binding?

We explore the systematics of odd-even mass staggering with a view to identifying the physical mechanisms responsible. The BCS pairing and mean field contributions have A- and number parity dependencies which can help disentangle the different contributions. This motivates the two-term parametrization c_1 + c_2/A as a theoretically based alternative to the inverse power form traditionally used to fit odd-even mass differences. Assuming that the A-dependence of the BCS pairing is weak, we find that mean-field contributions are dominant below mass number A~40 while BCS pairing dominates in heavier nuclei.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2008

Odd-even mass differences from self-consistent mean-field theory

We survey odd-even nuclear binding energy staggering using density functional theory with several treatments of the pairing interaction including the BCS, Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov, and the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov with the Lipkin-Nogami approximation. We calculate the second difference of binding energies and compare with 443 measured neutron energy differences in isotope chains and 418 measured proton energy differences in isotone chains. The particle-hole part of the energy functional is taken as the SLy4 Skyrme parametrization and the pairing part of the functional is based on a contact interaction with possible density dependence. An important feature of the data, reproduced by the theory, is the sharp gap quenching at magic numbers. With the strength of the interaction as a free parameter, the theory can reproduce the data to an rms accuracy of about 0.25 MeV. This is slightly better than a single-parameter phenomenological description but slightly poorer than the usual two-parameter phenomenological form C/A^alpha . The following conclusions can be made about the performance of common parametrization of the pairing interaction: (i) there is a weak preference for a surface-peaked neutron-neutron pairing, which might be attributable to many-body effects; (ii) a larger strength is required in the proton pairing channel than in the neutron pairing channel; (iii) pairing strengths adjusted to the well-known spherical isotope chains are too weak to give a good overall fit to the mass differences.

nucl-th↗