Superfluid Local Density Approximation: A Density Functional Theory Approach to the Nuclear Pairing Problem

I describe the foundation of a Density Functional Theory approach to include pairing correlations, which was applied to a variety of systems ranging from dilute fermions, to neutron stars and finite nuclei. Ground state properties as well as properties of excited states and time-dependent phenomena can be achieved in this manner within a formalism based on microscopic input.Comment: 12 pages, chapter in "Fifty Years of Nuclear BCS", eds. R.A. Broglia and V.Zelevinsk

Casimir Interaction among Objects Immersed in a Fermionic Environment

Using ensembles of two, three and four spheres immersed in a fermionic background we evaluate the (integrated) density of states and the Casimir energy. We thus infer that for sufficiently smooth objects, whose various geometric characteristic lengths are larger then the Fermi wave length one can use the simplest semiclassical approximation (the contribution due shortest periodic orbits only) to evaluate the Casimir energy. We also show that the Casimir energy for several objects can be represented fairly accurately as a sum of pairwise Casimir interactions between pairs of objects.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, version to appear in PR