A Microscopic Look at Liquid Helium: the 3He Impurity Case

The description of the properties of liquid Helium is a challenge for any microscopic many-body theory. In this context, we study the ground state and the excitation spectrum of one $^3$He impurity in liquid $^4$He at T=0 with the aim of illustrating the power of the correlated basis function formalism in describing heavily correlated systems. The strong interatomic interaction and the large density require the theory to be pushed to a high degree of sophistication. A many-body correlation operator containing explicit two- and thre-particle correlation functions is needed to obtain a realistic ground state wave function, whereas a perturbative expansion including up to two phonon correlated states must be enforced to study the impurity excitation energies. The theory describes accurately the experimental spectrum along all the available momentum range. As empirically shown by the experiments, a marked deviation from the quadratic Landau-Pomeranchuck behavior is found and the momentum dependent effective mass of the impurity increases of $\sim50~$ at $q\sim1.7~\AA^{-1}$ with respect to its q=0 value. Although the main emphasis is given to the Correlated Basis Function theory, we present also comparisons with other methods, as diffusion Monte Carlo, variational Monte Carlo with shadow wave functions and time dependent correlations.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figs, world-scientific latex style. Proceedings of Many Body X, Seattle, 10-15 Sept. 199

Spin polarized neutron matte and magnetic susceptibility within the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approximation

The Brueckner--Hartree--Fock formalism is applied to study spin polarized neutron matter properties. Results of the total energy per particle as a function of the spin polarization and density are presented for two modern realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions, Nijmegen II and Reid93. We find that the dependence of the energy on the spin polarization is practically parabolic in the full range of polarizations. The magnetic susceptibility of the system is computed. Our results show no indication of a ferromagnetic transition which becomes even more difficult as the density increases.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures (Submitted to PRC

Energy and structure of dilute hard- and soft-sphere gases

The energy and structure of dilute hard- and soft-sphere Bose gases are systematically studied in the framework of several many-body approaches, as the variational correlated theory, the Bogoliubov model and the uniform limit approximation, valid in the weak interaction regime. When possible, the results are compared with the exact diffusion Monte Carlo ones. A Jastrow type correlation provides a good description of the systems, both hard- and soft-spheres, if the hypernetted chain energy functional is freely minimized and the resulting Euler equation is solved. The study of the soft-spheres potentials confirms the appearance of a dependence of the energy on the shape of the potential at gas paremeter values of $x \sim 0.001$. For quantities other than the energy, such as the radial distribution functions and the momentum distributions, the dependence appears at any value of $x$. The occurrence of a maximum in the radial distribution function, in the momentum distribution and in the excitation spectrum is a natural effect of the correlations when $x$ increases. The asymptotic behaviors of the functions characterizing the structure of the systems are also investigated. The uniform limit approach results very easy to implement and provides a good description of the soft-sphere gas. Its reliability improves when the interaction weakens.Comment: Accepted in Phys. Rev.

Density and isospin asymmetry dependence of high-momentum components

We study the one-body momentum distribution at different densities in nuclear matter, with special emphasis on its components at high momentum. Explicit calculations for finite neutron-proton asymmetry, based on the ladder self-consistent Green's function approach, allow us to access the isospin dependence of momentum distributions and elucidate their role in neutron-rich systems. Comparisons with the deuteron momentum distribution indicate that a substantial proportion of high-momentum components are dominated by tensor correlations. We identify the density dependence of these tensor correlations in the momentum distributions. Further, we find that high-momentum components are determined by the density of each sub-species and we provide a new isospin asymmetry scaling of these components. We use different realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions to quantify the model dependence of our results.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Accepted version in Phys. Rev.

Spin-orbit and tensor interactions in homogeneous matter of nucleons: accuracy of modern many-body theories

We study the energy per particle of symmetric nuclear matter and pure neutron matter using realistic nucleon--nucleon potentials having non central tensor and spin--orbit components, up to three times the empirical nuclear matter saturation density, $\rho_0=0.16$ fm$^{-3}$. The calculations are carried out within the frameworks of the Brueckner--Bethe--Goldstone (BBG) and Correlated Basis Functions (CBF) formalisms, in order to ascertain the accuracy of the methods. The two hole--line approximation, with the continuous choice for the single particle auxiliary potential, is adopted for the BBG approach, whereas the variational Fermi Hypernetted Chain/Single Operator Chain theory, corrected at the second order perturbative expansion level, is used in the CBF one. The energies are then compared with the available Quantum and Variational Monte Carlo results in neutron matter and with the BBG, up to the three hole--line diagrams. For neutron matter and potentials without spin--orbit components all methods, but perturbative CBF, are in reasonable agreement up to $\rho\sim$ 3 $\rho_0$. After the inclusion of the LS interactions, we still find agreement around $\rho_0$, whereas it is spoiled at larger densities. The spin--orbit potential lowers the energy of neutron matter at $\rho_0$ by $\sim$ 3--4 MeV per nucleon. In symmetric nuclear matter, the BBG and the variational results are in agreement up to $\sim$ 1.5 $\rho_0$. Beyond this density, and in contrast with neutron matter, we find good agreement only for the potential having spin--orbit components.Comment: 18 pages, 4 tables. Accepted in PL

Pairing and short-range correlations in nuclear systems

The structure and density dependence of the pairing gap in infinite matter is relevant for astrophysical phenomena and provides a starting point for the discussion of pairing properties in nuclear structure. Short-range correlations can significantly deplete the available single-particle strength around the Fermi surface and thus provide a reduction mechanism of the pairing gap. Here, we study this effect in the singlet and triplet channels of both neutron matter and symmetric nuclear matter. Our calculations use phase-shift equivalent interactions and chiral two-body and three-body interactions as a starting point. We find an unambiguous reduction of the gap in all channels with very small dependence on the NN force in the singlet neutron matter and the triplet nuclear matter channel. In the latter channel, short range correlations alone provide a 50% reduction of the pairing gap.Comment: Final version, as published in journal after refereein