Michael Bender

Argonne, Physics Division

Properties of heavy nuclei from configuration mixing of symmetry-restored self-consistent mean-field states


Self-consistent mean-field methods have become a standard tool to describe and analyze the properties of all nuclei throughout the chart of nuclei but the lightest ones. They provide the only currently available fully microscopic model that can be applied to all heavy nuclei, using the full model space of occupied states and using the same effective interaction for all nuclei. Typical observables that can be described are masses, radii, or deformations. In this talk I will give reasons why and present a method how to go systematically beyond the mean-field approach by adding long-range correlations through symmetry restoration and configuration mixing. Doing so improves the modeling of all typical mean-field observables, and gives access to collective excitations, their excitation energies, and transition moments. I will focus on ground-state correlations and discuss their implications on the global systematics of binding energies, deformations, and strategies to adjust effective interactions.

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