0000000000818501
AUTHOR
Andrea Idini
Discovery of an Exceptionally Strong β -Decay Transition of F20 and Implications for the Fate of Intermediate-Mass Stars
A significant fraction of stars between 7 and 11 solar masses are thought to become supernovae, but the explosion mechanism is unclear. The answer depends critically on the rate of electron capture on ^{20}Ne in the degenerate oxygen-neon stellar core. However, because of the unknown strength of the transition between the ground states of ^{20}Ne and ^{20}F, it has not previously been possible to fully constrain the rate. By measuring the transition, we establish that its strength is exceptionally large and that it enhances the capture rate by several orders of magnitude. This has a decisive impact on the evolution of the core, increasing the likelihood that the star is (partially) disrupte…
Solution of universal nonrelativistic nuclear DFT equations in the Cartesian deformed harmonic-oscillator basis. (IX) HFODD (v3.06h) : a new version of the program
We describe the new version (v3.06h) of the code HFODD that solves the universal nonrelativistic nuclear DFT Hartree-Fock or Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov problem by using the Cartesian deformed harmonic-oscillator basis. In the new version, we implemented the following new features: (i) zero-range three- and four-body central terms, (ii) zero-range three-body gradient terms, (iii) zero-range tensor terms, (iv) zero-range isospin-breaking terms, (v) finite-range higher-order regularized terms, (vi) finite-range separable terms, (vii) zero-range two-body pairing terms, (viii) multi-quasiparticle blocking, (ix) Pfaffian overlaps, (x) particle-number and parity symmetry restoration, (xi) axializatio…
Electron Capture Processes in Intermediate Mass stars
Intermediate mass stars develop a degenerate core constituted of O, Ne and Mg during their evolution. As the density in the core increases electron capture sets in igniting Ne and O burning. Particularly important is electron capture on 20Ne that has been found recently to be dominated by a second forbidden transition from the 0+ ground state of 20Ne to the 2+ ground state of 20F. We have performed shell–model calculations to determine the transition strength and provide an updated value of the electron capture rate and the expected branching ratio to the corresponding β–decay process. peerReviewed
Interweaving of elementary modes of excitation in superfluid nuclei through particle-vibration coupling: Quantitative account of the variety of nuclear structure observables
A complete characterization of the structure of nuclei can be obtained by combining information arising from inelastic scattering, Coulomb excitation, and $\ensuremath{\gamma}$-decay, together with one- and two-particle transfer reactions. In this way it is possible to probe both the single-particle and collective components of the nuclear many-body wave function resulting from the coupling of these modes and, as a result, diagonalizing the low-energy Hamiltonian. We address the question of how accurately such a description can account for experimental observations in the case of superfluid nuclei. Our treatment goes beyond the traditional approach, in which these properties are calculated …
Model nuclear energy density functionals derived from ab initio calculations
We present the first application of a new approach, proposed in [Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics, 43, 04LT01 (2016)] to derive coupling constants of the Skyrme energy density functional (EDF) from ab initio Hamiltonian. By perturbing the ab initio Hamiltonian with several functional generators defining the Skyrme EDF, we create a set of metadata that is then used to constrain the coupling constants of the functional. We use statistical analysis to obtain such an ab initio-equivalent Skyrme EDF. We find that the resulting functional describes properties of atomic nuclei and infinite nuclear matter quite poorly. This may point out to the necessity of building up the ab init…
Nonlocal energy density functionals for pairing and beyond-mean-field calculations
We propose to use two-body regularized finite-range pseudopotential to generate nuclear energy density functional (EDF) in both particle-hole and particle-particle channels, which makes it free from self-interaction and self-pairing, and also free from singularities when used beyond mean field. We derive a sequence of pseudopotentials regularized up to next-to-leading order (NLO) and next-to-next-to-leading order (N2LO), which fairly well describe infinite-nuclear-matter properties and finite open-shell paired and/or deformed nuclei. Since pure two-body pseudopotentials cannot generate sufficiently large effective mass, the obtained solutions constitute a preliminary step towards future imp…
White paper: from bound states to the continuum
This white paper reports on the discussions of the 2018 Facility for Rare Isotope Beams Theory Alliance (FRIB-TA) topical program ‘From bound states to the continuum: Connecting bound state calculations with scattering and reaction theory’. One of the biggest and most important frontiers in nuclear theory today is to construct better and stronger bridges between bound state calculations and calculations in the continuum, especially scattering and reaction theory, as well as teasing out the influence of the continuum on states near threshold. This is particularly challenging as many-body structure calculations typically use a bound state basis, while reaction calculations more commonly utili…
Interweaving of elementary modes of excitation in superfluid nuclei through particle-vibration coupling: Quantitative account of the variety of nuclear structure observables
A complete characterization of the structure of nuclei can be obtained by combining information arising from inelastic scattering, Coulomb excitation, and γ -decay, together with one- and two-particle transfer reactions. In this way it is possible to probe both the single-particle and collective components of the nuclear many-body wave function resulting from the coupling of these modes and, as a result, diagonalizing the low-energy Hamiltonian. We address the question of how accurately such a description can account for experimental observations in the case of superfluid nuclei. Our treatment goes beyond the traditional approach, in which these properties are calculated separately, and mos…
Testing two-nucleon transfer reaction mechanism with elementary modes of excitation in exotic nuclei
Nuclear Field Theory of structure and reactions is confronted with observations made on neutron halo dripline nuclei, resulting in the prediction of a novel (symbiotic) mode of nuclear excitation, and on the observation of the virtual effect of the halo phenomenon in the apparently non-halo nucleus $^7$Li. This effect is forced to become real by intervening the virtual process with an external (t,p) field which, combined with accurate predictive abilities concerning the absolute differential cross section, reveals an increase of a factor 2 in the cross section due to the presence of halo ground state correlations, and is essential to reproduce the value of the observed $d \sigma(^7$Li(t,p)$…
Unified description of structure and reactions: implementing the Nuclear Field Theory program
The modern theory of the atomic nucleus results from the merging of the liquid drop (Niels Bohr and Fritz Kalckar) and of the shell model (Marie Goeppert Meyer and Axel Jensen), which contributed the concepts of collective excitations and of independent-particle motion respectively. The unification of these apparently contradictory views in terms of the particle-vibration (rotation) coupling (Aage Bohr and Ben Mottelson) has allowed for an ever increasingly complete, accurate and detailed description of the nuclear structure, Nuclear Field Theory (NFT, developed by the Copenhagen-Buenos Aires collaboration) providing a powerful quantal embodiment. In keeping with the fact that reactions are…
Landau parameters for energy density functionals generated by local finite-range pseudopotentials
In Landau theory of Fermi liquids, the particle-hole interaction near the Fermi energy in different spin-isospin channels is probed in terms of an expansion over the Legendre polynomials. This provides a useful and efficient way to constrain properties of nuclear energy density functionals in symmetric nuclear matter and finite nuclei. In this study, we present general expressions for Landau parameters corresponding to a two-body central local regularized pseudopotential. We also show results obtained for two recently adjusted NLO and N$^2$LO parametrizations. Such pseudopotentials will be used to determine mean-field and beyond-mean-field properties of paired nuclei across the entire nucle…