Structure of the vacuum states in the presence of isovector and isoscalar pairing correlations

The long standing problem of proton-neutron pairing and, in particular, the limitations imposed on the solutions by the available symmetries, is revisited. We look for solutions with non-vanishing expectation values of the proton, the neutron and the isoscalar gaps. For an equal number of protons and neutrons we find two solutions where the absolute values of proton and neutrons gaps are equal but have the same or opposite sign. The behavior and structure of these solutions differ for spin saturated (single l-shell) and spin unsaturared systems (single j-shell). In the former case the BCS results are checked against an exact calculation.Comment: 19 pages, 5 postscript figure

Measurement of B(D+ -> mu+ nu) and the pseudoscalar decay constant f_D at CLEO

The analysis of 60 1/pb data collected on the psi(3770) resonance with the CLEO-c detector has produced the first statistically significant signal for D+ -> mu+ nu decay and led to the measurement of the decay branching fraction B(D+ -> mu+ nu) = (3.5 +- 1.4 +- 0.6) x 10-4 and the pseudoscalar decay constant f_D = (202 +- 41 +- 17) MeV.Comment: Talk presented at the 1st Meeting of the APS Topical Group on Hadronic Physics (Fermilab, Oct. 24-26, 2004). LaTeX 4 pages, 2 figure

Microscopic description of large-amplitude shape-mixing dynamics with inertial functions derived in local quasiparticle random-phase approximation

On the basis of the adiabatic self-consistent collective coordinate method, we develop an efficient microscopic method of deriving the five-dimensional quadrupole collective Hamiltonian and illustrate its usefulness by applying it to the oblate-prolate shape coexistence/mixing phenomena in proton-rich 68,70,72Se. In this method, the vibrational and rotational collective masses (inertial functions) are determined by local normal modes built on constrained Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov states. Numerical calculations are carried out using the pairing-plus-quadrupole Hamiltonian including the quadrupole-pairing interaction. It is shown that the time-odd components of the moving mean-field significantly increase the vibrational and rotational collective masses in comparison with the Inglis-Belyaev cranking masses. Solving the collective Schroedinger equation, we evaluate excitation spectra, quadrupole transitions and moments. Results of the numerical calculation are in excellent agreement with recent experimental data and indicate that the low-lying states of these nuclei are characterized as an intermediate situation between the oblate-prolate shape coexistence and the so-called gamma unstable situation where large-amplitude triaxial-shape fluctuations play a dominant role.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Anomalous rotational-alignment in N=Z nuclei and residual neutron-proton interaction

Recent experiments have demonstrated that the rotational-alignment for the $N=Z$ nuclei in the mass-80 region is considerably delayed as compared to the neighboring $N \ne Z$ nuclei. We investigate whether this observation can be understood by a known component of nuclear residual interactions. It is shown that the quadrupole-pairing interaction, which explains many of the delays known in rare-earth nuclei, does not produce the substantial delay observed for these $N=Z$ nuclei. However, the residual neutron-proton interaction which is conjectured to be relevant for $N=Z$ nuclei is shown to be quite important in explaining the new experimental data.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, final version accepted by Phys. Rev. C as a Rapid Communicatio

Pairing in 4-component fermion systems: the bulk limit of SU(4)-symmetric Hamiltonians

Fermion systems with more than two components can exhibit pairing condensates of much more complex structure than the well-known single BCS condensate of spin-up and spin-down fermions. In the framework of the exactly solvable SO(8) Richardson-Gaudin model with SU(4)-symmetric Hamiltonians, we show that the BCS approximation remains valid in the thermodynamic limit of large systems for describing the ground state energy and the canonical and quasiparticle excitation gaps. Correlations beyond BCS pairing give rise to a spectrum of collective excitations, but these do not affect the bulk energy and quasiparticle gaps.Comment: 13 pages; 2 figures; 1 tabl