Introduction - Strong interaction in the nuclear medium: new trends

Recent achievements in nuclear forces theory open new perspectives for the next decade of low energy nuclear physics, bringing together people from very different communities. Although many developments remain to be done, the possibility to directly use QCD to describe nuclear system is a major challenge that is within reach. In this introduction to the 2009 International Joliot-Curie School (EJC2009), new trends in the strong nuclear interaction are summarized starting from quarks and ending with finite or infinite nuclear systems. At different energy scales, selected new concepts and ideas have been discussed in a rather simple way. Recent advances in the theory of nuclear forces, thanks to chiral perturbation and effective field theories, have led to a new generation of strong nuclear interaction particularly suited to low energy nuclear physics. The interesting aspects of new interactions compared to conventional forces are underlined. Recent achievements in ab initio theories that directly start from the bare nucleon-nucleon interaction and their key role to understand the three-body force are illustrated. Finally, future perspectives for standard nuclear physics theories, namely Shell Model and Energy Density Functional, are discussed.Comment: 26 pages, 28 figures--Introduction Lecture to the 2009 International Joliot-Curie School, Lacanau, France, 27 Sept.-3 Oct. 200

Quantum Monte-Carlo methods and exact treatment of the two-body problem with Hartree-Fock Bogoliubov states

In this article, we show that the exact two-body problem can be replaced by quantum jumps between densities written as D=| \Psi_a \right> \left< \Psi_b | where | \Psi_a \right> and | \Psi_b \right> are vacuum for different quasi-particles operators. It is shown that the stochastic process can be written as a Stochastic Time-Dependent Hartree-Fock Bogoliubov theory (Stochastic TDHFB) for the generalized density ${\cal R}$ associated to $D$ where ${\cal R}^2 = {\cal R}$ along each stochastic trajectory.Comment: 5 page

Large amplitude collective dynamic beyond the independent particle/quasiparticle picture

In the present note, a summary of selected aspects of time-dependent mean-field theory is first recalled. This approach is optimized to describe one-body degrees of freedom. A special focus is made on how this microscopic theory can be reduced to a macroscopic dynamic for a selected set of collective variables. Important physical phenomena like adiabaticity/diabaticity, one-body dissipation or memory effect are discussed. Special aspects related to the use of a time-dependent density functional instead of a time-dependent Hartree-Fock theory based on a bare hamiltonian are underlined. The absence of proper description of complex internal correlations however strongly impacts the predictive power of mean-field. A brief overview of theories going beyond the independent particles/quasi-particles theory is given. Then, a special attention is paid for finite fermionic systems at low internal excitation. In that case, quantum fluctuations in collective space that are poorly treated at the mean-field level, are important. Several approaches going beyond mean-field, that are anticipated to improve the description of quantum fluctuations, are discussed: the Balian-V\'en\'eroni variational principle, the Time-Dependent Random Phase Approximation and the recently proposed Stochastic Mean-Field theory. Relations between these theories are underlined as well as their advantages and shortcomings.Comment: To be published in the ebook "Progress of time-dependent nuclear reaction theory" honoring Prof. Joachim Maruhn's retiremen

Density Matrix Functional Theory for the Lipkin model

A Density Matrix Functional theory is constructed semi-empirically for the two-level Lipkin model. This theory, based on natural orbitals and occupation numbers, is shown to provide a good description for the ground state energy of the system as the two-body interaction and particle number vary. The application of Density Matrix Functional theory to the Lipkin model illustrates that it could be a valuable tool for systems presenting a shape phase-transition such as nuclei. The improvement of one-body observables description as well as the interest for Energy Density Functional theory are discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Physical Review

Optimizing stochastic trajectories in exact quantum jump approaches of interacting systems

The quantum jump approach, where pairs of state vectors follow Stochastic Schroedinger Equation (SSE) in order to treat the exact quantum dynamics of two interacting systems, is first described. In this work the non-uniqueness of such stochastic Schroedinger equations is investigated to propose strategies to optimize the stochastic paths and reduce statistical fluctuations. In the proposed method, called the 'adaptative noise method', a specific SSE is obtained for which the noise depends explicitly on both the initial state and on the properties of the interaction Hamiltonian. It is also shown that this method can be further improved by introduction of a mean-field dynamics. The different optimization procedures are illustrated quantitatively in the case of interacting spins. A significant reduction of the statistical fluctuations is obtained. Consequently a much smaller number of trajectories is needed to accurately reproduce the exact dynamics as compared to the SSE without optimization.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, revised versio

From microscopic to macroscopic dynamics in mean-field theory: effect of neutron skin on fusion barrier and dissipation

In this work, we introduce a new method to reduce the microscopic mean-field theory to a classical macroscopic dynamics during the initial stage of fusion reactions. We show that TDHF (Time-dependent Hartree-Fock) could be a useful tool to gain information on fusion barriers as well as on one-body dissipation effects. We apply the mean-field theory to the case of head-on reaction between $^{16}$O and $^{16,22,24,28}$O in order to quantify the effect of neutron skin on fusion. We show that the determination of fusion barrier requires, in addition to a precise knowledge of the relative distance between the center of mass of the two fusing nuclei, the introduction of an additional collective coordinate that explicitly breaks the neutron-proton symmetry. In this context, we estimate the position, height and diffuseness of the barrier as well as the one-body friction and show that a global enhancement of the fusion cross-section is expected in neutron rich nuclei.Comment: 9 ps pages including 9 figure

On the description of two-particle transfer in superfluid systems

Exact results of pair transfer probabilities for the Richardson model with equidistant or random level spacing are presented. The results are then compared either to particle-particle random phase approximation (ppRPA) in the normal phase or quasi-particle random phase approximation (QRPA) in the superfluid phase. We show that both ppRPA and QRPA are globally well reproducing the exact case although some differences are seen in the superfluid case. In particular the QRPA overestimates the pair transfer probabilities to excited states in the vicinity of the normal-superfluid phase transition, which might explain the difficult in detecting collective pairing phenomena as for example the Giant Pairing Vibration. The shortcoming of QRPA can be traced back to the breaking of particle number that is used to incorporate pairing. A method, based on direct diagonalization of the Hamiltonian in the space of two quasi-particle projected onto good particle number is shown to improve the description of pair transfer probabilities in superfluid systems.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Effect of pairing on one- and two-nucleon transfer below the Coulomb barrier: a time-dependent microscopic description

The effect of pairing correlation on transfer reaction below the Coulomb barrier is investigated qualitatively and quantitatively using a simplified version of the Time-Dependent Hartree-Fock + BCS approach. The effect of particle number symmetry breaking on the description of reaction and dedicated methods to extract one and two-nucleon transfer probabilities (P_{1n} and P_{2n}) in a particle number symmetry breaking approach are discussed. Influence of pairing is systematically investigated in the ^{40}Ca+ ^{40,42,44,46,48,50}Ca reactions. A strong enhancement of the two-particle transfer probabilities due to initial pairing correlations is observed. This enhancement induces an increase of the ratio of probabilities P_{2n} / (P_{1n})^2 compared to the case with no pairing. It is shown that this ratio increases strongly as the center of mass energy decreases with a value that could be larger than ten in the deep sub-barrier regime. An analysis of the pair transfer sensitivity to the type of pairing interaction, namely surface, mixed or volume, used in the theory is made. It is found that the pair transfer is globally insensitive to the type of force and mainly depends on the pairing interaction strength.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

Systematic of isovector and isoscalar giant quadrupole resonances in normal and superfluid deformed nuclei

The systematic study of isoscalar (IS) and isovector (IV) giant quadrupole responses (GQR) in normal and superfluid nuclei presented in [G. Scamps and D. Lacroix, Phys. Rev. 88, 044310 (2013)] is extended to the case of axially deformed and triaxial nuclei. The static and dynamical energy density functional based on Skyrme effective interaction are used to study static properties and dynamical response functions over the whole nuclear chart. Among the 749 nuclei that are considered, 301 and 65 are respectively found to be prolate and oblate while 54 do not present any symmetry axis. For these nuclei, the IS- and IV-GQR response functions are systematically obtained. In these nuclei, different aspects related to the interplay between deformation and collective motion are studied. We show that some aspects like the fragmentation of the response induced by deformation effects in axially symmetric and triaxial nuclei can be rather well understood using simple arguments. Besides this simplicity, more complex effects show up like the appearance of non-trivial deformation effects on the collective motion damping or the influence of hexadecapole or higher-orders effects. A specific study is made on the triaxial nuclei where the absence of symmetry axis adds further complexity to the nuclear response. The relative importance of geometric deformation effects and coupling to other vibrational modes are discussed.Comment: 17 pages, 26 figure

Systematic of isovector and isoscalar giant quadrupole resonances in normal and superfluid spherical nuclei

The isoscalar (IS) and isovector (IV) quadrupole responses of nuclei are systematically investigated using the time-dependent Skyrme Energy Density Functional including pairing in the BCS approximation. Using two different Skyrme functionals, Sly4 and SkM*, respectively 263 and 304 nuclei have been found to be spherical along the nuclear charts. The time-dependent evolution of these nuclei has been systematically performed giving access to their quadrupole responses. It is shown that the mean-energy of the collective high energy state globally reproduces the experimental IS and IV collective energy but fails to reproduce their lifetimes. It is found that the mean collective energy depends rather significantly on the functional used in the mean-field channel. Pairing by competing with parity effects can slightly affect the collective response around magic numbers and induces a reduction of the collective energy compared to the average trend. Low-lying states, that can only be considered if pairing is included, are investigated. While the approach provides a fair estimate of the low lying state energy, it strongly underestimates the transition rate $B(E2)$. Finally, the possibility to access to the density dependence of the symmetry energy through parallel measurements of both the IS- and IV-GQR is discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 19 figure