Intermediate energy Coulomb excitation as a probe of nuclear structure at radioactive beam facilities

The effects of retardation in the Coulomb excitation of radioactive nuclei in intermediate energy collisions (Elab ~100 MeV/nucleon) are investigated. We show that the excitation cross sections of low-lying states in 11Be, {38,40,42}S and {44,46}Ar projectiles incident on gold and lead targets are modified by as much as 20% due to these effects. The angular distributions of decaying gamma-rays are also appreciably modified.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures, Phys. Rev. C, in pres

Coulomb Excitation of Multi-Phonon Levels of the Giant Dipole Resonance

A closed expression is obtained for the cross-section for Coulomb excitation of levels of the giant dipole resonance of given angular momentum and phonon number. Applications are made to the Goldhaber-Teller and Steinwedel-Jensen descriptions of the resonance, at non-relativistic and relativistic bombarding energies.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Semiclassical treatment of fusion processes in collisions of weakly bound nuclei

We describe a semiclassical treatment of nuclear fusion reactions involving weakly bound nuclei. In this treatment, the complete fusion probabilities are approximated by products of two factors: a tunneling probability and the probability that the system is in its ground state at the strong absorption radius. We investigate the validity of the method in a schematic two-channel application, where the channels in the continuum are represented by a single resonant state. Comparisons with full coupled-channels calculations are performed. The agreement between semiclassical and quantal calculations isquite good, suggesting that the procedure may be extended to more sophisticated discretizations of the continuum.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Coulomb corrected eikonal description of the breakup of halo nuclei

The eikonal description of breakup reactions diverges because of the Coulomb interaction between the projectile and the target. This divergence is due to the adiabatic, or sudden, approximation usually made, which is incompatible with the infinite range of the Coulomb interaction. A correction for this divergence is analysed by comparison with the Dynamical Eikonal Approximation, which is derived without the adiabatic approximation. The correction consists in replacing the first-order term of the eikonal Coulomb phase by the first-order of the perturbation theory. This allows taking into account both nuclear and Coulomb interactions on the same footing within the computationally efficient eikonal model. Excellent results are found for the dissociation of 11Be on lead at 69 MeV/nucleon. This Coulomb Corrected Eikonal approximation provides a competitive alternative to more elaborate reaction models for investigating breakup of three-body projectiles at intermediate and high energies.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Free energies of crystalline solids: a lattice-switch Monte Carlo method

We present a method for the direct evaluation of the difference between the free energies of two crystalline structures, of different symmetry. The method rests on a Monte Carlo procedure which allows one to sample along a path, through atomic-displacement-space, leading from one structure to the other by way of an intervening transformation that switches one set of lattice vectors for another. The configurations of both structures can thus be sampled within a single Monte Carlo process, and the difference between their free energies evaluated directly from the ratio of the measured probabilities of each. The method is used to determine the difference between the free energies of the fcc and hcp crystalline phases of a system of hard spheres.Comment: 5 pages Revtex, 3 figure

Quantum calculations of Coulomb reorientation for sub-barrier fusion

Classical mechanics and Time Dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) calculations of heavy ions collisions are performed to study the rotation of a deformed nucleus in the Coulomb field of its partner. This reorientation is shown to be independent on charges and relative energy of the partners. It only depends upon the deformations and inertias. TDHF calculations predict an increase by 30% of the induced rotation due to quantum effects while the nuclear contribution seems negligible. This reorientation modifies strongly the fusion cross-section around the barrier for light deformed nuclei on heavy collision partners. For such nuclei a hindrance of the sub-barrier fusion is predicted.Comment: accepted for publication in Physical Review Lette

Accuracy of B(E2; 0+ -> 2+) transition rates from intermediate-energy Coulomb excitation experiments

The method of intermediate-energy Coulomb excitation has been widely used to determine absolute B(E2; 0+ -> 2+) quadrupole excitation strengths in exotic nuclei with even numbers of protons and neutrons. Transition rates measured with intermediate-energy Coulomb excitation are compared to their respective adopted values and for the example of 26Mg to the B(E2; 0+ -> 2+) values obtained with a variety of standard methods. Intermediate-energy Coulomb excitation is found to have an accuracy comparable to those of long-established experimental techniques.Comment: to be published in Phys. Rev.

Quantal Brownian Motion - Dephasing and Dissipation

We analyze quantal Brownian motion in $d$ dimensions using the unified model for diffusion localization and dissipation, and Feynman-Vernon formalism. At high temperatures the propagator possess a Markovian property and we can write down an equivalent Master equation. Unlike the case of the Zwanzig-Caldeira-Leggett model, genuine quantum mechanical effects manifest themselves due to the disordered nature of the environment. Using Wigner picture of the dynamics we distinguish between two different mechanisms for destruction of coherence. The analysis of dephasing is extended to the low temperature regime by using a semiclassical strategy. Various results are derived for ballistic, chaotic, diffusive, both ergodic and non-ergodic motion. We also analyze loss of coherence at the limit of zero temperature and clarify the limitations of the semiclassical approach. The condition for having coherent effect due to scattering by low-frequency fluctuations is also pointed out. It is interesting that the dephasing rate can be either larger or smaller than the dissipation rate, depending on the physical circumstances.Comment: LaTex, 23 pages, 4 figures, published vesio

Magneto-Transport in the Two-Dimensional Lorentz Gas

We consider the two-dimensional Lorentz gas with Poisson distributed hard disk scatterers and a constant magnetic field perpendicular to the plane of motion. The velocity autocorrelation is computed numerically over the full range of densities and magnetic fields with particular attention to the percolation threshold between hopping transport and pure edge currents. The Ohmic and Hall conductance are compared with mode-coupling theory and a recent generalized kinetic equation valid for low densities and small fields. We argue that the long time tail as $t^{-2}$ persists for non-zero magnetic field.Comment: 7 pages, 14 figures. Uses RevTeX and epsfig.sty. Submitted to Physical Review

Genetic embedded matching approach to ground states in continuous-spin systems

Due to an extremely rugged structure of the free energy landscape, the determination of spin-glass ground states is among the hardest known optimization problems, found to be NP-hard in the most general case. Owing to the specific structure of local (free) energy minima, general-purpose optimization strategies perform relatively poorly on these problems, and a number of specially tailored optimization techniques have been developed in particular for the Ising spin glass and similar discrete systems. Here, an efficient optimization heuristic for the much less discussed case of continuous spins is introduced, based on the combination of an embedding of Ising spins into the continuous rotators and an appropriate variant of a genetic algorithm. Statistical techniques for insuring high reliability in finding (numerically) exact ground states are discussed, and the method is benchmarked against the simulated annealing approach.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl