Physical Review C
Variational approach to collective excitations
Michelangelo Sambataro, Nguyen Dinh Dang
Abstract
We discuss a variational approach to collective excitations in a boson formalism based on quasiparticles. Bosons are defined in correspondence with pairs of quasiparticles and boson images of fermion operators are constructed by means of a mapping procedure of Marumori-type. Phonons of the type used within the random phase approximation (RPA) are introduced as Bogoliubov transformations of these bosons. The variables entering into the definition of these phonons as well as of the quasiparticle operators are fixed simultaneously by minimizing the expectation value of the boson Hamiltonian in the vacuum of the phonons. The approach is tested within an exactly solvable two-level model which is characterized by a pairing Hamiltonian. A quite good agreement is found for the energies of the ground state and of the first ${0}^{+}$ excited state. The comparison with the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer method and the quasiparticle RPA as well as with some recent self-consistent RPA-type approaches is discussed.