Theory of density -wave instabilities in symmetric nuclear matter
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate collective density instabilities that arise in Fermionic systems by which the ground state of the system exhibits a broken translational symmetry. The system under investigation is symmetric (equal number of protons and neutrons) nuclear matter. A new simple phenomenological nucleon-nucleon interaction potential is proposed which correctly reproduces all basic properties of nuclear matter as well as the binding energies of light closed-shell nuclei. With this potential, restricted-basis Hartree-Fock calculations were performed to determine the ground states of nuclear matter and even-even (N=Z) light nuclei up to A = 80. Many of the light nuclei were found to be deformed in their ground state. For these nuclei, shape excitations were also studied. The ground state of symmetric nuclear matter does indeed exhibit a spontaneously-broken translational symmetry. This collective instability manifests a one-dimensional nucleon density wave and leads to a substantially larger binding energy for nucleons, compared with that for uniform nuclear matter. The importance of this instability in the search for new superheavy elements and for the properties of neutron-star matter is discussed.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Overhauser, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Nuclear physics
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