Physics Letters B 787 (2018) 134–140
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Non-perturbative collective inertias for fission: A comparative study
Samuel A. Giuliani
a
, Luis M. Robledo
b,c,∗
a
NSCL/FRIB Laboratory, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
b
Center for Computational Simulation, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Campus de Montegancedo, Boadilla del Monte, 28660 Madrid, Spain
c
Departamento de Física Teórica, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
26 July 2018
Received
in revised form 14 September
2018
Accepted
23 October 2018
Available
online 25 October 2018
Editor:
W. Haxton
Keywords:
Fission
Collective
inertias
Generator
coordinate method
Adiabatic
time dependent Hartree Fock
Bogolyubov
The non-perturbative method to compute Adiabatic Time Dependent Hartree Fock Bogoliubov (ATDHFB)
collective inertias is extended to the Generator Coordinate Method (GCM) in the Gaussian overlap
approximation (GOA) including the case of density dependent forces. The two inertias schemes are
computed along the fission path of the
234
U and compared with the perturbative results. We find that the
non-perturbative schemes predict very similar collective inertias with a much richer structure than the
one predicted by perturbative calculations. Moreover, the non-perturbative inertias show an extraordinary
similitude with the exact GCM inertias computed numerically from the energy overlap. These results
indicate that the non-perturbative inertias provide the right structure as a function of the collective
variable and only a phenomenological factor is required to mock up the exact GCM inertia, bringing new
soundness to the microscopic description of fission.
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
Despite its discovery dates back almost 80 years, fission still re-
mains
a major challenge for nuclear theory [1]. The lack of a feasi-
ble
full quantum formalism describing the evolution of the nucleus
from the ground state to scission enforces the adoption of differ-
ent
approximations, which in turn provide a theoretical framework
for the estimation of fission properties in nuclei. For instance, the
starting point in any traditional energy density functional calcula-
tion
is the original assumption that fission can be described using
a reduced set of collective variables [2,3]. Within this approxima-
tion
the fission probability is obtained as the probability of the
nucleus to tunnel under the fission barrier, which is driven by the
potential energy surface (PES) and the collective inertias felt by
the nucleus in its way to scission [4,5]. Both quantities, together
with the collective ground-state energy, enter in the collective ac-
tion
integral allowing for the calculation of the spontaneous fission
lifetime by means of the semiclassical Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin
(WKB) approach.
A
sound calculation of the PES, collective ground-state en-
ergy
and collective inertias is thus essential for a proper estima-
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
addresses: giuliani@nscl.msu.edu (S.A. Giuliani), luis.robledo@uam.es
(L.M. Robledo).
tion of fission lifetimes [1,6]. If the formalism that shall be used
in the calculation of the first two quantities is well established,
the same cannot be claimed for the collective inertias. Nowadays
two theoretical frameworks allow for a derivation of a collective
Schrödinger equation and its associated inertia: the Adiabatic Time
Dependent Hartree Fock Bogoliubov (ATDHFB) formalism and the
Generator Coordinate Method (GCM) with the Gaussian overlap ap-
proximation
(GOA) [1]. In both approaches the collective inertias
can be written in terms of the collective momentum operators,
which in turn can be related to the linear response matrix (LRM)
and its inverse when acting on Hartree Fock Bogoliubov (HFB)
wave functions. Given the whopping number of two-quasiparticle
elementary excitations in realistic applications to fission, the di-
mensionality
of the LRM is very high and therefore its inverse is
difficult to evaluate. To avoid this bottleneck the assumption of
diagonal dominance of the LRM is often used, leading to the tra-
ditional
perturbative cranking formulas for the collective inertias
involving denominators composed of two quasiparticle energies.
Abetter approximation to the exact expression of the collective
inertias was introduced in [7](see also [8]), where the collective
momentum operator is computed in terms of the derivatives of
the density and pairing tensor with respect of the collective vari-
ables.
This non-perturbative cranking calculation of the collective
inertias, implemented in the ATDHFB approach, showed that the
numerical treatment of the derivatives gives rise to a less adiabatic
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2018.10.045
0370-2693/
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.