arXiv subjects

Zao-Chun Gao

Publications and source records attributed to Zao-Chun Gao.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Decomposition of angular momentum projected nuclear wave function

Angular momentum projection is a basic technique in constructing nuclear wave functions with good spins. Traditionally, a projected nuclear wave function is expressed in terms of the bases built by performing the angular momentum projection directly on reference states for the whole nuclear system. Alternatively, one can construct nuclear wave function with another kind of projected bases, called as the coupled projected bases, which are generated by first performing the angular momentum projections on the reference states for neutrons and protons, respectively, then coupling the neutron projected states with the proton ones via Clebsch-Gordon coefficients. In the present work, we derive a new identity, which provides a decomposition of the conventional angular momentum projected nuclear wave function in terms of the coupled projected bases. This decomposition offers direct insight into the underlying structure of nuclear states. To show this point, we present the decompositions of variation after projection shell model (VAPSM) wave functions for the ground states in some $sd$ shell nuclei. It is interesting to see that even for the ground states in even-even nuclei, the nucleons are not fully paired. Finally, we demonstrate that the VAPSM wave function can be further improved by adopting the coupled projected bases.

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arXiv2024

Removal of $K$-mixing in angular momentum projected nuclear wave functions

Angular momentum projection plays a key role in studying quantum many-body systems with rotational invariance such as atomic nuclei. At a given spin $J$, one can generate $2J+1$ angular momentum projected states labeled with $-J\leq K \leq J$ from a deformed Slater determinant. Usually, a nuclear wave function with $K$-mixing can be expressed as a superposition of all these $2J+1$ projected states, where the coefficients can be obtained by solving the generalized eigenvalue equation. In this Letter, we report a new fundamental feature that the frequently discussed $K$-mixing in the angular momentum projected nuclear wave function can be safely removed. Strikingly, we found that such nuclear wave function with $K$-mixing can always be equivalently replaced by a single projected state with any given $K$. Consequently, such nuclear wave function can be significantly simplified, especially for high-spin states. This also indicates that the $K$-mixing in the angular momentum projected nuclear wave functions, adopted by many present-day nuclear models, does not carry any physical meaning, and is essentially different from that $K$-mixing caused by the Coriolis force in the cranked shell model.

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arXiv2023

Finding the best basis states for the variation after projection nuclear wave functions

The variation after projection (VAP) method is expected to be an efficient way of getting the optimized nuclear wave functions, so that they can be as close as possible to the exact shell model ones. However, we found there are two additional problems that may seriously affect the convergence of the VAP iteration. The first problem is, if a randomly selected projected basis state does not mix with a VAP wave function in the VAP calculation, then it is likely that this basis state will never mix with the VAP wave function even after the VAP iteration converges, which means such selected projected basis state is useless. The other problem is the poor orthonormality among the projected basis states that seriously affect the accuracy of the calculated VAP wave function. In the present work, solutions for these two problems are proposed and some examples are presented to test the validity. It turns out that, with the present solutions, the most important projected basis states can be reliably obtained and the fully optimized VAP wave functions can be accurately and efficiently calculated.

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arXiv2023

Mixing of one-particle-one-hole projected states with the variation after projection wave functions

In this paper, we study the mixing of one-particle-one-hole projected states with the variation after projection (VAP) wave functions in attempt to improve the approximation of this method. It turns out that when minimizing only the lowest (yrast) energy with given spin and parity, the one-particle-one-hole projected states can not be mixed into the converged VAP wave function, which is very similar to the situation of the Hartree-Fock method. However, if one minimizes the sum of several lowest energies with the same spin and parity, the one-particle-one-hole mixing can make some improvements to the VAP wave functions. We expect such one-particle-one-hole mixing may be useful in the calculations of the low-lying excited states in heavy nuclei with a large model space.

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arXiv2021

Variation after projection calculations for high-spin states

In this paper, an improvement has been made on the variation after projection (VAP) method, which is crucial in the calculations of high-spin states. It turns out that, the form of the trial VAP wave function with spin $J$ can be simplified by adopting just one projected state rather than previously adopting all $(2J+1)$ angular momentum projected states for each selected reference state, $|Φ\rangle$. The present calculations show that such simplification still minimizes the angular momentum projected energy up to a very good approximation. In this simplified VAP scheme, one can obtain almost equivalent VAP wave functions starting from different sets of the projected basis states. This clearly shows that a nuclear state can not be identified with a single intrinsic state, while in the traditional nuclear collective models, an intrinsic state is usually assigned to a well deformed rotational band.

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arXiv2018

New algorithm in the variation after projection calculations for non-yrast nuclear states

We present a novel and simple algorithm in the variation after projection (VAP) approach for the non-yrast nuclear states. It is for the first time that the yrast state and non-yrast states can be varied on the same footing. The orthogonality among the calculated states is automatically fulfilled by solving the Hill-Wheeler equation. This avoids the complexity of the frequently used Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization, as adopted by the excited VAMPIR method. Thanks to the Cauchy's interlacing theorem in the matrix theory, the sum of the calculated lowest projected energies with the same quantum numbers can be safely minimized. Once such minimization is converged, all the calculated energies and the corresponding states can be obtained, simultaneously. The present VAP calculations are performed with time-odd Hartree-Fock Slater determinants. It is shown that the calculated VAP energies (both yrast and non-yrast) are very close to the corresponding ones from the full shell model calculations. It looks the present algorithm is not limited to the VAP, but should be universal, i.e., one can do the variation with different forms of the many-body wavefunctions to calculate the excited states in different quantum many-body systems.

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arXiv2015

Variation after full projection with triaxially deformed nuclear mean field

We implemented a variation after projection (VAP) algorithm based on a triaxially deformed Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov vacuum state. This is the first projected mean field study that includes all the quantum numbers (except parity), i.e., spin ($J$), isospin ($T$) and mass number ($A$). Systematic VAP calculations with $JTA$-projection have been performed for the even-even $sd$-shell nuclei with the USDB Hamiltonian. All the VAP ground state energies are within 500 keV above the exact shell model values. Our VAP calculations show that the spin projection has two important effects: (1) the spin projection is crucial in achieving good approximation of the full shell model calculation. (2) the intrinsic shapes of the VAP wavefunctions with spin projection are always triaxial, while the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov methods likely provide axial intrinsic shapes. Finally, our analysis suggests that one may not be possible to associate an intrinsic shape to an exact shell model wave function.

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arXiv2014

A convenient implementation of the overlap between arbitrary Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov vacua for projection

Overlap between Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov(HFB) vacua is very important in the beyond mean-field calculations. However, in the HFB transformation, the $U,V$ matrices are sometimes singular due to the exact emptiness ($v_i=0$) or full occupation ($u_i=0$) of some single-particle orbits. This singularity may cause some problem in evaluating the overlap between HFB vacua through Pfaffian. We found that this problem can be well avoided by setting those zero occupation numbers to some tiny values (e.g., $u_i,v_i=10^{-8}$). This treatment does not change the HFB vacuum state because $u_i^2,v_i^2=10^{-16}$ are numerically zero relative to 1. Therefore, for arbitrary HFB transformation, we say that the $U,V$ matrices can always be nonsingular. From this standpoint, we present a new convenient Pfaffian formula for the overlap between arbitrary HFB vacua, which is especially suitable for symmetry restoration. Testing calculations have been performed for this new formula. It turns out that our method is reliable and accurate in evaluating the overlap between arbitrary HFB vacua.

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arXiv2014

Matrix elements of one-body and two-body operators between arbitrary HFB multi-quasiparticle states

We present new formulae for the matrix elements of one-body and two-body physical operators in compact forms, which are applicable to arbitrary Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov wave functions, including those for multi-quasiparticle excitations. The test calculations show that our formulae may substantially accelerate the process of symmetry restoration when applied to the heavy nuclear system.

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arXiv2014

Description of collective and quasiparticle excitations in deformed actinide nuclei: The first application of the Heavy Shell Model

The Heavy Shell Model (HSM) (Y. Sun and C.-L. Wu, Phys. Rev. C 68, 024315 (2003)) was proposed to take the advantages of two existing models, the projected shell model (PSM) and the Fermion Dynamical Symmetry Model (FDSM). To construct HSM, one extends the PSM by adding collective D-pairs into the intrinsic basis. The HSM is expected to describe simultaneously low-lying collective and quasi-particle excitations in deformed nuclei, and still keeps the model space tractable even for the heaviest systems. As the first numerical realization of the HSM, we study systematically the band structures for some deformed actinide nuclei, with a model space including up to 4-quasiparticle and 1-D-pair configurations. The calculated energy levels for the ground- state bands, the collective bands such as β - and γ -bands, and some quasiparticle bands agree well with known experimental data. Some low-lying quasiparticle bands are predicted, awaiting experimental confirmation.

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arXiv2010

Can one identify the intrinsic structure of the yrast states in $^{48}$Cr after the backbending?

The backbending phenomenon in $^{48}$Cr has been investigated using the recently developed Projected Configuration Interaction (PCI) method, in which the deformed intrinsic states are directly associated with shell model (SM) wavefunctions. Two previous explanations, (i) $K=0$ band crossing, and (ii) $K=2$ band crossing have been reinvestigated using PCI, and it was found that both explanations can successfully reproduce the experimental backbending. The PCI wavefunctions in the pictures of $K=0$ band crossing and $K=2$ band crossing are highly overlapped. We conclude that there are no unique intrinsic states associated with the yrast states after backbending in $^{48}$Cr.

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arXiv2009

Improved basis selection for the Projected Configuration Interaction method applied to heavy nuclei

In a previous paper we proposed a Projected Configuration Interaction method that uses sets of axially deformed single particle states to build up the many body basis. We show that the choice of the basis set is essential for the efficiency of the method, and we propose a newly improved algorithm of selecting the projected basis states. We also extend our method to model spaces that can accomodate both parities, and can include odd-multipole terms in the effective interaction, such as the octupole contributions. %A universal algorithm of the choice of the PCI basis was presented in details. Examples of $^{52}$Fe, $^{56}$Ni, $^{68}$Se, $^{70}$Se and $^{76}$Se are calcualted showing good agreement with the full Configuration Interaction results.

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arXiv2008

Nonaxial-octupole effect in superheavy nuclei

The triaxial-octupole Y$_{32}$ correlation in atomic nuclei has long been expected to exist but experimental evidence has not been clear. We find, in order to explain the very low-lying 2$^-$ bands in the transfermium mass region, that this exotic effect may manifest itself in superheavy elements. Favorable conditions for producing triaxial-octupole correlations are shown to be present in the deformed single-particle spectrum, which is further supported by quantitative Reflection Asymmetric Shell Model calculations. It is predicted that the strong nonaxial-octupole effect may persist up to the element 108. Our result thus represents the first concrete example of spontaneous breaking of both axial and reflection symmetries in the heaviest nuclear systems.

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arXiv2006

Shell model method for Gamow-Teller Transitions in heavy, deformed nuclei

A method for calculation of Gamow-Teller transition rates is developed by using the concept of the Projected Shell Model (PSM). The shell model basis is constructed by superimposing angular-momentum-projected multi-quasiparticle configurations, and nuclear wave functions are obtained by digonalizing the two-body interactions in these projected states. Calculation of transition matrix elements in the PSM framework is discussed in detail, and the effects caused by the Gamow-Teller residual forces and by configuration-mixing are studied. With this method, it may become possible to perform a state-by-state calculation for beta-decay and electron-capture rates in heavy, deformed nuclei at finite temperatures. Our first example indicates that, while experimentally known Gamow-Teller transition rates from the ground state of the parent nucleus are reproduced, stronger transitions from some low-lying excited states are predicted to occur, which may considerably enhance the total decay rates once these nuclei are exposed to hot stellar environments.

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arXiv2006

Signature inversion -- manifestation of drift of the rotational axis in triaxial nuclei

A possible scheme of realizing shell model calculations for heavy nuclei is based on a deformed basis and the projection technique. Here we present a new development for odd-odd nuclei, in which one starts with triaxially-deformed multi-quasi-particle configurations, builds the shell-model space through exact three-dimensional angular-momentum-projection, and diagonalizes a two-body Hamiltonian in this space. The model enables us to study the old problem of signature inversion from a different view. With an excellent reproduction of the experimental data in the mass-130 region, the results tend to interpret the phenomenon as a manifestation of dynamical drift of the rotational axis with presence of axial asymmetry in these nuclei.

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