Impact of pion dynamics on nuclear shell structure

Spin-isospin response in exotic nuclear systems is investigated. It is found that in some nuclei excitations with pionic quantum numbers (0-, 1+, 2-, ...) appear at very low energies with large transition probabilities, which is an indication of the vicinity of the onset of pion condensation. As an example, 2- components of the spin-dipole resonance in 78-Ni and 132-Sn are considered. The existence of such modes points out to the necessity of taking into account their coupling to other elementary modes of excitation, e.g. single-quasiparticle ones. This coupling is introduced in the theory for the first time. Thereby, pion-exchange contribution to the nucleon-nucleon interaction is included in the relativistic framework beyond the Hartree-Fock approximation. Namely, classes of Feynman diagrams are selected according to their significance for nuclear spectroscopic characteristics, such as single-particle energies and strength functions, and included into the nucleonic self-energy in all orders of meson-exchange. As an illustration, the impact of these new contributions on the single-particle energies of 100-Sn is discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; a Contribution to the Proceedings of the International Nuclear Physics Conference 'Nuclear Structure and Dynamics III

Nuclear response theory for spin-isospin excitations in a relativistic quasiparticle-phonon coupling framework

A new theoretical approach to spin-isospin excitations in open-shell nuclei is presented. The developed method is based on the relativistic meson-exchange nuclear Lagrangian of Quantum Hadrodynamics and extends the response theory for superfluid nuclear systems beyond relativistic quasiparticle random phase approximation in the proton-neutron channel (pn-RQRPA). The coupling between quasiparticle degrees of freedom and collective vibrations (phonons) introduces a time-dependent effective interaction, in addition to the exchange of pion and $\rho$-meson taken into account without retardation. The time-dependent contributions are treated in the resonant time-blocking approximation, in analogy to previously developed relativistic quasiparticle time blocking approximation (RQTBA) in the neutral (non-isospin-flip) channel. The new method is called proton-neutron RQTBA (pn-RQTBA) and applied to Gamow-Teller resonance in a chain of neutron-rich Nickel isotopes $^{68-78}$Ni. A strong fragmentation of the resonance along with quenching of the strength, as compared to pn-RQRPA, is obtained. Based on the calculated strength distribution, beta-decay half-lives of the considered isotopes are computed and compared to pn-RQRPA half-lives and to experimental data. It is shown that a considerable improvement of the half-life description is obtained in pn-RQTBA because of the spreading effects, which bring the lifetimes to a very good quantitative agreement with data.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures. v3: convergence study added, other minor corrections and references added, version accepted for publication in The European Physical Journal A as part of the topical issue "Finite range effective interactions and associated many-body methods - A tribute to Daniel Gogny". The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2016-16205-

Microscopic description of nuclear vibrations: Relativistic QRPA and its extensions with quasiparticle-vibration coupling

The recent extensions of the covariant energy density functional theory with the quasiparticle-vibration coupling (QVC) are reviewed. Formulation of the Quasiparticle Random Phase Approximation (QRPA) in the relativistic framework is discussed. Self-consistent extensions of the relativistic QRPA imply the QVC which is implemented in two-body propagators in the nuclear medium. This provides fragmentation of the QRPA states describing the damping of the vibrational motion.Comment: Published in "50 Years of Nuclear BCS", edited by R. A. Broglia and V.G. Zelevinsky, World Scientific (2013

Quasiparticle-vibration coupling effects on nuclear transitions of astrophysical interest

The relativistic quasiparticle time-blocking approximation (RQTBA) is applied to the description of nuclear excitation modes of astrophysical interest. This method is based on the meson-nucleon Lagrangian and goes beyond the standard relativistic quasiparticle random-phase approximation (RQRPA) by treating the coupling between single quasiparticles and collective vibrations of the nucleus. We calculate electric dipole transitions and Gamow-Teller modes in the (p,n) direction in a few Sn isotopes and obtain the rates of (n,$\gamma$) reaction and $\beta^-$-decay processes, which govern the r-process nucleosynthesis, in a unified RQTBA framework. Gamow-Teller transitions in the (n,p) branch, which in principle can serve for the modeling of stellar evolution, are also investigated, and $^{90}$Zr is taken as a study case.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of the Fifth Conference on Nuclei and Mesoscopic Physics (NMP17), East Lansing, USA, March 6-10, 201