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Physical Review C

Nuclear level densities including thermal and quantal fluctuations

G. Puddu, P. F. Bortignon, Ricardo A. Broglia

Published Nov 1, 1990• 37 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The nuclear level density for solvable model Hamiltonians is calculated as a function of the excitation energy, taking into account both large-amplitude thermal and small-amplitude quantal fluctuations. The formalism, which is applied to simple systems displaying a phase transition (deformed to spherical, superfluid to normal) as a function of the temperature, accurately reproduces the exact solutions. The contribution of thermal fluctuations changes the level density by an order of magnitude. Quantal fluctuations are essential to reproduce the absolute energies of the system and thus to relate the excitation energy to temperature.

DOI
10.1103/physrevc.42.r1830

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The nuclear level density for solvable model Hamiltonians is calculated as a function of the excitation energy, taking into account both large-amplitude thermal and small-amplitude quantal fluctuations. The formalism, which is applied to simple systems displaying a phase transition (deformed to spherical, superfluid to normal) as a function of the temperature, accurately reproduces the exact solutions. The contribution of thermal fluctuations changes the level density by an order of magnitude. Quantal fluctuations are essential to reproduce the absolute energies of the system and thus to relate the excitation energy to temperature.
Methods which include the effect of mean-field fluctuations on the nuclear partition function and level density of hot nuclei are tested by applying them to a many-body system for which exact solutions are available, the Lipkin model. It is found that for finite systems fluctuation corrections to the mean field partition function and level density can be substantial, and especially so near a shape phase transition where these fluctuations smooth out discontinuities in the mean-field quantities. The model calculations suggest that only time-independent fluctuations are important at high temperatures or at high excitation energies. Moreover, even when fluctuations are restricted to a small set of constraints, a significant improvement over the mean-field calculations can result. This is thus a practical approximation since it requires only knowledge of the deformation free energy surfaces at finite temperature.
A number of powerful methods exist in statistical mechanics to describe the interweaving of the variety of elementary modes of excitation taking place in a quantal many-body system. Among them, one can mention the Static Path approximation (cf., e.g., Feynmann and Hibbs ( 1965 )), the Monte-Carlo Shell Model Method (Koonin et al. ( 1997 )), and the thermal Green-function formalism (cf., e.g., Mahan ( 1981 )). The first two approaches have not yet been systematically used to describe nuclear motion at finite temperature. We shall briefly discuss them in the present chapter. The Matsubara techniques, which have been applied to the study of a large variety of phenomena, are discussed in Ch. 9 .
Atomic nucleus consists of nucleons (protons and neutrons) interacting each other with the so-called nucleon-nucleon (NN) forces. The structure of atomic nucleus can be studied via many-body theories. Some of them are the well-known random-phase approximation (RPA) and/or the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory. These theories produce very well the properties of infinite systems such as superconductors, where the quantal and thermal fluctuations are zero or very small. However, our recent studies have shown that these fluctuations are significant in finite systems such as atomic nuclei. As the result, the physical properties of nuclear systems are changed due to the effects of quantal and thermal fluctuations. Therefore, the conventional many body theories need to be modified to include the effects of these fluctuations when they are applied to atomic nucleus. Recently, we have proposed a self-consistent quasiparticle RPA (SCQRPA) taking into account the effects of quantal and thermal fluctuations. The SCQRPA has been tested and the results obtained are in reasonable agreements with the exact solutions of the model cases as well as those obtained within the quantum Monte-Carlo method for realistic nuclei.
Abstract. The mean-field approximation predicts pairing and shape phase transitions in nuclei as a function of temperature or excitation energy. However, in the finite nucleus the singularities of these phase transitions are smoothed out by quantal and thermal fluctuations. An interesting question is whether signatures of these transitions survive despite the large fluctuations. The shell model Monte Carlo (SMMC) approach enables us to calculate the statistical properties of nuclei beyond the mean-field approximation in model spaces that are many orders of magnitude larger than spaces that can be treated by conventional diagonalization methods. We have extended the SMMC method to heavy nuclei and used it to study the transition from vibrational (spherical) to rotational (deformed) nuclei in families of rare-earth isotopes. We have calculated collective enhancement factors of level densities as a function of excitation energy and found that the decay of the vibrational and rotational enhancements is well correlated with the pairing and shape phase transitions, respectively.