arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Ph. Chomaz.
We have perfomed Time Dependant Hartree-Fock (TDHF) calculations on the non linear response of nuclei. We have shown that quadrupole (and dipole) motion produces monopole (and quadrupole) oscillations in all atomic nuclei. We have shown that these findings can be interpreted as a large coupling between one and two phonon states leading to large anharmonicities.
The excitation of the giant dipole resonance by fusion is studied with N/Z asymmetry in the entrance channel. the TDHF solution exhibits a strong dipole vibration which can be associated with a giant vibration along the main axis of a fluctuating prolate shape. The consequences on the gamma-ray emission from hot compound nuclei are discussed.
Studying the energy partioning published in nucl-th/0406056v2 we show that the presented results do not fulfill the sum rule due to energy conservation. The observed fluctuations of the energy conservation test point to a numerical problem. Moreover, analysis of the binding energies show that the fragment recognition algorithm adopted by Campi et al. leads with a sizeable probability to fragments containing up to the total mass even for excitation energies as large as 3/4 of the total binding. This surprising result points to another problem since the published inter-fragment energy is not zero while a unique fragment is present. This problem may be due to either the fragment recognition algorithm or to the definition of the inter and intra-fragment energy. These numerical inconsistencies should be settled before any conclusion on the physics can be drawn.
The connection between the thermodynamics of charged finite nuclear systems and the asymptotically measured partitions is presented. Some open questions, concerning in particular equilibrium partitions are discussed. We show a detailed comparison of the decay patterns in Au+ C,Cu,Au central collisions and in Au quasi-projectile events. Observation of abnormally large fluctuations in carefully selected samples of data is reported as an indication of a first order phase transition (negative heat capacity) in the nuclear equation of state.
The liquid-gas phase transition is analyzed from the topologic properties of the event distribution in the obervables space. A multi-canonical formalism allows to directly relate the standard phase transition with neutral particles to the case where the non saturating Coulomb interaction is present, and to interpret the effect of Coulomb as a deformation of the probability distributions and a rotation of the order parameter. This formalism is applied to a statistical multifragmentation model and consequences for the nuclear multifragmentation phase transitions are drawn.
In a recent paper L.G. Moretto et al [nucl-th/0208024] claim that the negative heat capacities presented in our previously published paper \cite{PRL2000} are "artifacts" coming from the use of periodic boundary conditions in the Lattice-Gas calculations. We stress in this comment that this claim is wrong: in ref. \cite{PRL2000} we did not use periodic boundary conditions and anyhow the boundary conditions are irrelevant for the statistical ensemble used in \cite{PRL2000}. The second claim of [nucl-th/0208024] is that, because of the Coulomb repulsion, systems "with A>60 should present no anomalous negative heat capacities". We show that this conclusion is contradicted by exact Lattice-gas simulations including Coulomb forces which present negative heat capacities even for A>200.
The physical origin of the backbendings in the equations of state of finite but not necessarily small systems is studied in the Ising model with fixed magnetization (IMFM) by means of the topological properties of the observable distributions and the analysis of the largest cluster with increasing lattice size. Looking at the convexity anomalies of the IMFM thermodynamic potential, it is shown that the order of the transition at the thermodynamic limit can be recognized in finite systems independently of the lattice size. General statistical mechanics arguments and analytical calculations suggest that the backbending in the caloric curve is a transient behaviour which should not converge to a plateau in the thermodynamic limit, while the first order transition is signalled by a discontinuity in other observables.
First order phase transitions in finite systems can be defined through the bimodality of the distribution of the order parameter. This definition is equivalent to the one based on the inverted curvature of the thermodynamic potential. Moreover we show that it is in a one to one correspondence with the Yang Lee theorem in the thermodynamic limit. Bimodality is a necessary and sufficient condition for zeroes of the partition sum in the control intensive variable complex plane to be distributed on a line perpendicular to the real axis with a uniform density, scaling like the number of particles.
Quasi-projectile events from peripheral 35 A.MeV Au+ Au collisions are compared to central Au + C, Au + Cu and Au + Au events in the same range of excitation energy in terms of critical partitions and critical exponents. All the different data sets coherently point to a value E*c=4.5 A.MeV for the apparent critical excitation energy. The critical exponents tau, sigma are compatible with the observation of a liquid-gas phase transition for these systems.
Self consistent quantum approaches are used to study the instabilities of finite nuclear systems. The frequencies of multipole density fluctuations are determined as a function of dilution and temperature, for several isotopes. The spinodal region of the phase diagrams is determined and it appears that instabilities are reduced by finite size effects. The role of surface and volume instabilities is discussed. It is indicated that the important chemical effects associated with mechanical disruption may lead to isospin fractionation.
A good quality scaling of the cluster size distributions is obtained for the Lattice Gas Model using the Fisher's ansatz for the scaling function. This scaling identifies a pseudo-critical line in the phase diagram of the model that spans the whole (subcritical to supercritical) density range. The independent cluster hypothesis of the Fisher approach is shown to describe correctly the thermodynamics of the lattice only far away from the critical point.
We investigate the relation between various statistical ensembles of finite systems. If ensembles differ at the level of fluctuations of the order parameter, we show that the equations of states can present major differences. A sufficient condition for this inequivalence to survive at the thermodynamical limit is worked out. If energy consists in a kinetic and a potential part, the microcanonical ensemble does not converge towards the canonical ensemble when the partial heat capacities per particle fulfill the relation $c_{k}^{-1}+c_{p}^{-1}<0$.
In this letter, we show that the non-linearitites of large amplitude motions in atomic nuclei induce giant quadrupole and monopole vibrations. As a consequence, the main source of anharmonicity is the coupling with configurations including one of these two giant resonances on top of any state. Two-phonon energies are often lowered by one or two MeV because of the large matrix elements with such three phonon configurations. These effects are studied in two nuclei, 40Ca and 208Pb.
The 11Be break-up is calculated using a non perturbative time-dependent quantum calculation. The evolution of the neutron halo wave function shows an emission of neutron at large angles for grazing impact parameters and at forward angles for large impact parameters. The neutron angular distribution is deduced for the different targets and compared to experimental data. We emphasize the diversity of diffraction mechanisms, in particular we discuss the interplay of the nuclear effects such as the towing mode and the Coulomb break-up. A good agreement is found with experimental data.
We calculate the inelastic scattering cross sections to populate one- and two-phonon states in heavy ion collisions with both Coulomb and nuclear excitations. Starting from a microscopic approach based on RPA, we go beyond it in order to treat anharmonicities and non-linear terms in the exciting field. These anharmonicities and non-linearities are shown to have important effects on the cross sections both in the low energy part of the spectrum and in the energy region of the Double Giant Quadrupole Resonance. By properly introducing an optical potential the inelastic cross section is calculated semiclassically by integrating the excitation probability over all impact parameters. A satisfactory agreement with the experimental results is obtained.
We investigate a reformulation of the dynamics of interacting fermion systems in terms of a stochastic extension of Time Dependent Hartree-Fock equations. The noise is found from a path-integral representation of the evolution operator and allows to interpret the exact N-body state as a coherent average over Slater determinants evolving under the random mean-fied. The full density operator and the expectation value of any observable are then reconstructed using pairs of stochastic uncorrelated wave functions. The imaginary time propagation is also presented and gives a similar stochastic one-body scheme which converges to the exact ground state without developing a sign problem. In addition, the growth of statistical errors is examined to show that the stochastic formulation never explode in a finite dimensional one-body space. Finally, we consider initially correlated systems and present some numerical implementations in exactly soluble models to analyse the precision and the stability of the approach in practical cases.
A global protocol for the thermostatistical analysis of hot nuclear sources is discussed. Within our method of minimization of variances we show that the abnormal kinetic energy fluctuation signal recently reported in different experimental data (M.D'Agostino et al.-Phys. Lett. B 473 (2000) 219, N. Le Neindre et al.- contr. to the XXXVIII Bormio Winter Meeting on Nucl. Phys. (2001) 404) is a genuine signal of a first order phase transition in a finite system.
Multifragmentation of a ``fused system'' was observed for central collisions between 32 MeV/nucleon 129Xe and natSn. Most of the resulting charged products were well identified thanks to the high performances of the INDRA 4pi array. Experimental higher-order charge correlations for fragments show a weak but non ambiguous enhancement of events with nearly equal-sized fragments. Supported by dynamical calculations in which spinodal decomposition is simulated, this observed enhancement is interpreted as a ``fossil'' signal of spinodal instabilities in finite nuclear systems.