Identifier

etd-0702103-154150

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Physics and Astronomy

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

Our understanding of nuclear structure is built upon mean-field theories such as Hartree-Fock and time-dependent Hartree-Fock. The small-amplitude limit of the latter is the random phase approximation (RPA), which is widely used to model giant resonances in nuclei. Despite this popularity, RPA has been mostly validated against toy models; tests against complex models are scarce in the literature. We perform a thorough test of the RPA against full 0hw shell model (SM) calculations, including in our investigation binding energies, scalar ground-state observables, for which we develop a new method, and transition strengths. We allow deformed Hartree-Fock solutions and compare results for spherical and deformed nuclei. We obtain reasonable agreement between RPA and SM, albeit with some significant failures. Particularly, we found that the low-lying collectivity is poorly described for deformed mean-field solutions, which we interpret as incomplete symmetry restoration in RPA. Results for observables, and in particular for J2, also point out toward the same conclusion regarding the symmetries of the ground state. We also prove, both analytically and numerically, that a long-standing theorem regarding RPA is violated in the case of deformation. The worse violation appears for low-lying transitions, such as isoscalar E2, which we consider as a third argument for an incomplete symmetry restoration.

Date

2003

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Calvin Johnson

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.2411

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