arXiv subjects

W. Nazarewicz

Publications and source records attributed to W. Nazarewicz.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

arXiv2010

Open problems in theory of nuclear open quantum systems

Is there a connection between the branch point singularity at the particle emission threshold and the appearance of cluster states which reveal the structure of a corresponding reaction channel? Which nuclear states are most impacted by the coupling to the scattering continuum? What should be the most important steps in developing the theory that will truly unify nuclear structure and nuclear reactions? The common denominator of these questions is the continuum shell-model approach to bound and unbound nuclear states, nuclear decays, and reactions.

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arXiv2010

One-quasiparticle States in the Nuclear Energy Density Functional Theory

We study one-quasiproton excitations in the rare-earth region in the framework of the nuclear Density Functional Theory in the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov variant. The blocking prescription is implemented exactly, with the time-odd mean field fully taken into account. The equal filling approximation is compared with the exact blocking procedure. We show that both procedures are strictly equivalent when the time-odd channel is neglected, and discuss how nuclear alignment properties affect the time-odd fields. The impact of time-odd fields on calculated one-quasiproton bandhead energies is found to be rather small, of the order of 100-200 keV; hence, the equal filling approximation is sufficiently precise for most practical applications. The triaxial polarization of the core induced by the odd particle is studied. We also briefly discuss the occurrence of finite-size spin instabilities that are present in calculations for odd-mass nuclei when certain Skyrme functionals are employed.

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arXiv2010

Spatial symmetries of the local densities

Spatial symmetries of the densities appearing in the nuclear Density Functional Theory are discussed. General forms of the local densities are derived by using methods of construction of isotropic tensor fields. The spherical and axial cases are considered.

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arXiv2009

Isospin-symmetry restoration within the nuclear density functional theory: formalism and applications

Isospin symmetry of atomic nuclei is explicitly broken by the charge-dependent interactions, primarily the Coulomb force. Within the nuclear density functional theory, isospin is also broken spontaneously. We propose a projection scheme rooted in a mean field theory, that allows the consistent treatment of isospin breaking in both ground and exited nuclear states. We demonstrate that this scheme is essentially free from spurious divergences plaguing particle-number and angular-momentum restoration approaches. Applications of the new technique include excited high-spin states in medium-mass N=Z nuclei, such as superdeformed bands and many-particle-many-hole terminating states.

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arXiv2009

Self-consistent symmetries in the proton-neutron Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov approach

Symmetry properties of densities and mean fields appearing in the nuclear Density Functional Theory with pairing are studied. We consider energy functionals that depend only on local densities and their derivatives. The most important self-consistent symmetries are discussed: spherical, axial, space-inversion, and mirror symmetries. In each case, the consequences of breaking or conserving the time-reversal and/or proton-neutron symmetries are discussed and summarized in a tabulated form, useful in practical applications.

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arXiv2009

Microscopic description of complex nuclear decay: multimodal fission

Our understanding of nuclear fission, a fundamental nuclear decay, is still incomplete due to the complexity of the process. In this paper, we describe a study of spontaneous fission using the symmetry-unrestricted nuclear density functional theory. Our results show that the observed bimodal fission can be explained in terms of pathways in multidimensional collective space corresponding to different geometries of fission products. We also predict a new phenomenon of trimodal spontaneous fission for some rutherfordium, seaborgium, and hassium isotopes.

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arXiv2009

Systematic Study of Fission Barriers of Excited Superheavy Nuclei

A systematic study of fission-barrier dependence on excitation energy has been performed using the self-consistent finite-temperature Hartree-Fock+BCS (FT-HF+BCS) formalism with the SkM* Skyrme energy density functional. The calculations have been carried out for even-even superheavy nuclei with Z ranging between 110 and 124. For an accurate description of fission pathways, the effects of triaxial and reflection-asymmetric degrees of freedom have been fully incorporated. Our survey demonstrates that the dependence of isentropic fission barriers on excitation energy changes rapidly with particle number, pointing to the importance of shell effects even at large excitation energies characteristic of compound nuclei. The fastest decrease of fission barriers with excitation energy is predicted for deformed nuclei around N=164 and spherical nuclei around N=184 that are strongly stabilized by ground-state shell effects. For nuclei 240Pu and 256Fm, which exhibit asymmetric spontaneous fission, our calculations predict a transition to symmetric fission at high excitation energies due to the thermal quenching of static reflection asymmetric deformations.

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arXiv2009

Isospin mixing in nuclei within the nuclear density functional theory

We present the self-consistent, non-perturbative analysis of isospin mixing using the nuclear density functional approach and the rediagonalization of the Coulomb interaction in the good-isospin basis. The largest isospin-breaking effects are predicted for N = Z nuclei and they quickly fall with the neutron excess. The unphysical isospin violation on the mean-field level, caused by the neutron excess, is eliminated by the proposed method. We find a significant dependence of the magnitude of isospin breaking on the parametrization of the nuclear interaction term. A rough correlation has been found between the isospin mixing parameter and the difference of proton and neutron rms radii. The theoretical framework described in this study is well suited to describe a variety of phenomena associated with isospin violation in nuclei, in particular the isospin symmetry-breaking corrections to superallowed Fermi beta decays.

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arXiv2009

Fission Barriers of Compound Superheavy Nuclei

The dependence of fission barriers on the excitation energy of the compound nucleus impacts the survival probability of superheavy nuclei synthesized in heavy-ion fusion reactions. In this work, we investigate the isentropic fission barriers by means of the self-consistent nuclear density functional theory. The relationship between isothermal and isentropic descriptions is demonstrated. Calculations have been carried out for $^{264}$Fm, $^{272}$Ds, $^{278}$112, $^{292}$114, and $^{312}$124. For nuclei around $^{278}$112 produced in "cold fusion" reactions, we predict a more rapid decrease of fission barriers with excitation energy as compared to the nuclei around $^{292}$114 synthesized in "hot fusion" experiments. This is explained in terms of the difference between the ground-state and saddle-point temperatures. The effect of the particle gas is found to be negligible in the range of temperatures studied.

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arXiv2009

Coordinate-Space Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov Description of Superfluid Fermi Systems

Properties of strongly interacting, two-component finite Fermi systems are discussed within the recently developed coordinate-space Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) code {\hfbax}. Two illustrative examples are presented: (i) weakly bound deformed Mg isotopes, and (ii) spin-polarized atomic condensates in a strongly deformed harmonic trap.

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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.

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arXiv2008

Shell Model in the Complex Energy Plane

This work reviews foundations and applications of the complex-energy continuum shell model that provides a consistent many-body description of bound states, resonances, and scattering states. The model can be considered a quasi-stationary open quantum system extension of the standard configuration interaction approach for well-bound (closed) systems.

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arXiv2008

Density matrix renormalization group approach to two-fluid open many-fermion systems

We have extended the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) approach to two-fluid open many-fermion systems governed by complex-symmetric Hamiltonians. The applications are carried out for three- and four-nucleon (proton-neutron) systems within the Gamow Shell Model (GSM) in the complex-energy plane. We study necessary and sufficient conditions for the GSM+DMRG method to yield the correct ground state eigenvalue and discuss different truncation schemes within DMRG. The proposed approach will enable configuration interaction studies of weakly-bound and unbound strongly interacting complex systems which, because of a prohibitively large size of Fock space, cannot be treated by means of the direct diagonalization.

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arXiv2008

Deformed Coordinate-Space Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov Approach to Weakly Bound Nuclei and Large Deformations

The coordinate space formulation of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) method enables self-consistent treatment of mean-field and pairing in weakly bound systems whose properties are affected by the particle continuum space. Of particular interest are neutron-rich, deformed drip-line nuclei which can exhibit novel properties associated with neutron skin. To describe such systems theoretically, we developed an accurate 2D lattice Skyrme-HFB solver {\hfbax} based on B-splines. Compared to previous implementations, we made a number of improvements aimed at boosting the solver's performance. These include: explicit imposition of axiality and space inversion, use of the modified Broyden's method to solve self-consistent equations, and a partial parallelization of the code. {\hfbax} has been benchmarked against other HFB solvers, both spherical and deformed, and the accuracy of the B-spline expansion was tested by employing the multiresolution wavelet method. Illustrative calculations are carried out for stable and weakly bound nuclei at spherical and very deformed shapes, including constrained fission pathways. In addition to providing new physics insights, {\hfbax} can serve as a useful tool to assess the reliability and applicability of coordinate-space and configuration-space HFB solvers, both existing and in development.

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arXiv2007

Particle-Number Projection and the Density Functional Theory

In the framework of the Density Functional Theory for superconductors, we study the restoration of the particle number symmetry by means of the projection technique. Conceptual problems are outlined and numerical difficulties are discussed. Both are related to the fact that neither the many-body Hamiltonian nor the wave function of the system appear explicitly in the Density Functional Theory. Similar obstacles are encountered in self-consistent theories utilizing density-dependent effective interactions.

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arXiv2007

Additivity of effective quadrupole moments and angular momentum alignments in the A~130 nuclei

The additivity principle of the extreme shell model stipulates that an average value of a one-body operator be equal to the sum of the core contribution and effective contributions of valence (particle or hole) nucleons. For quadrupole moment and angular momentum operators, we test this principle for highly and superdeformed rotational bands in the A~130 nuclei. Calculations are done in the self-consistent cranked non-relativistic Hartree-Fock and relativistic Hartree mean-field approaches. Results indicate that the additivity principle is a valid concept that justifies the use of an extreme single-particle model in an unpaired regime typical of high angular momenta.

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arXiv2007

Continuum Coupling and Single-Nucleon Overlap Integrals

The presence of a particle continuum, both of a resonant and non-resonant character, can significantly impact spectroscopic properties of weakly bound nuclei and excited nuclear states close to, and above, the particle emission threshold. In the framework of the continuum shell model in the complex momentum-plane, the so-called Gamow Shell Model, we discuss salient effects of the continuum coupling on the one-neutron overlap integrals and the associated spectroscopic factors in neutron-rich helium and oxygen nuclei. In particular, we demonstrate a characteristic near-threshold energy dependence of the spectroscopic factors for different l-waves. We show also that the realistic radial overlap functions, which are needed for the description of transfer reactions, can be generated by single-particle wave functions of the appropriately chosen complex potential.

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arXiv2007

Threshold Effects in Multi-channel Coupling and Spectroscopic Factors in Exotic Nuclei

In the threshold region, the cross section and the associated overlap integral obey the Wigner threshold law that results in the Wigner-cusp phenomenon. Due to flux conservation, a cusp anomaly in one channel manifests itself in other open channels, even if their respective thresholds appear at a different energy. The shape of a threshold cusp depends on the orbital angular momentum of a scattered particle; hence, studies of Wigner anomalies in weakly bound nuclei with several low-lying thresholds can provide valuable spectroscopic information. In this work, we investigate the threshold behavior of spectroscopic factors in neutron-rich drip-line nuclei using the Gamow Shell Model, which takes into account many-body correlations and the continuum effects. The presence of threshold anomalies is demonstrated and the implications for spectroscopic factors are discussed.

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