Regularity and chaos in the nuclear masses

Shell effects in atomic nuclei are a quantum mechanical manifestation of the single--particle motion of the nucleons. They are directly related to the structure and fluctuations of the single--particle spectrum. Our understanding of these fluctuations and of their connections with the regular or chaotic nature of the nucleonic motion has greatly increased in the last decades. In the first part of these lectures these advances, based on random matrix theories and semiclassical methods, are briefly reviewed. Their consequences on the thermodynamic properties of Fermi gases and, in particular, on the masses of atomic nuclei are then presented. The structure and importance of shell effects in the nuclear masses with regular and chaotic nucleonic motion are analyzed theoretically, and the results are compared to experimental data. We clearly display experimental evidence of both types of motionComment: 40 pages, 10 figures, Lectures delivered at the VIII Hispalensis International Summer School, Sevilla, Spain, June 2003 (to appear in Lecture Notes in Physics, Springer--Verlag, Eds. J. M. Arias and M. Lozano

Level density of a Fermion gas: average growth, fluctuations, universality

It has been shown by H. Bethe more than 70 years ago that the number of excited states of a Fermi gas grows, at high excitation energies $Q$, like the exponential of the square root of $Q$. This result takes into account only the average density of single particle (SP) levels near the Fermi energy. It ignores two important effects, namely the discreteness of the SP spectrum, and its fluctuations. We show that the discreteness of the SP spectrum gives rise to smooth finite--$Q$ corrections. Mathematically, these corrections are associated to the problem of partitions of an integer. On top of the smooth growth of the many--body density of states there are, generically, oscillations. An explicit expression of these oscillations is given. Their properties strongly depend on the regular or chaotic nature of the SP motion. In particular, we analyze their typical size, temperature dependence and probability distribution, with emphasis on their universal aspects.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. Lecture delivered at the workshop ``Nuclei and Mesoscopic Physics'', NSCL MSU, USA, October 23-26, 2004. To be published by American Institute of Physics, V. Zelevinsky e

Random matrices, random polynomials and Coulomb systems

It is well known that the joint probability density of the eigenvalues of Gaussian ensembles of random matrices may be interpreted as a Coulomb gas. We review these classical results for hermitian and complex random matrices, with special attention devoted to electrostatic analogies. We also discuss the joint probability density of the zeros of polynomials whose coefficients are complex Gaussian variables. This leads to a new two-dimensional solvable gas of interacting particles, with non-trivial interactions between particles.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Strongly Coupled Coulomb Systems, Saint-Malo, 199

Correlations in Nuclear Masses

It was recently suggested that the error with respect to experimental data in nuclear mass calculations is due to the presence of chaotic motion. The theory was tested by analyzing the typical error size. A more sensitive quantity, the correlations of the mass error between neighboring nuclei, is studied here. The results provide further support to this physical interpretation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Normal forms and complex periodic orbits in semiclassical expansions of Hamiltonian systems

Bifurcations of periodic orbits as an external parameter is varied are a characteristic feature of generic Hamiltonian systems. Meyer's classification of normal forms provides a powerful tool to understand the structure of phase space dynamics in their neighborhood. We provide a pedestrian presentation of this classical theory and extend it by including systematically the periodic orbits lying in the complex plane on each side of the bifurcation. This allows for a more coherent and unified treatment of contributions of periodic orbits in semiclassical expansions. The contribution of complex fixed points is find to be exponentially small only for a particular type of bifurcation (the extremal one). In all other cases complex orbits give rise to corrections in powers of $\hbar$ and, unlike the former one, their contribution is hidden in the ``shadow'' of a real periodic orbit.Comment: better ps figures available at http://www.phys.univ-tours.fr/~mouchet or on request to [email protected]

Thermodynamics of small Fermi systems: quantum statistical fluctuations

We investigate the probability distribution of the quantum fluctuations of thermodynamic functions of finite, ballistic, phase-coherent Fermi gases. Depending on the chaotic or integrable nature of the underlying classical dynamics, on the thermodynamic function considered, and on temperature, we find that the probability distributions are dominated either (i) by the local fluctuations of the single-particle spectrum on the scale of the mean level spacing, or (ii) by the long-range modulations of that spectrum produced by the short periodic orbits. In case (i) the probability distributions are computed using the appropriate local universality class, uncorrelated levels for integrable systems and random matrix theory for chaotic ones. In case (ii) all the moments of the distributions can be explicitly computed in terms of periodic orbit theory, and are system-dependent, non-universal, functions. The dependence on temperature and number of particles of the fluctuations is explicitly computed in all cases, and the different relevant energy scales are displayed.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, 5 table