Microscopically based energy density functionals for nuclei using the density matrix expansion: Implementation and pre-optimization

Journal Article · Mon Nov 15 00:00:00 EST 2010 · Physical Review. C, Nuclear Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVC.82.054307· OSTI ID:21499165

Stoitsov, M; Kortelainen, M; Schunck, N ^[1]; Bogner, S K; Gebremariam, B ^[2]; Duguet, T ^[2]; Furnstahl, R J ^[3]

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1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996 (United States) and Physics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831 (United States)
2. National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Laboratory, East Lansing, Michigan 48824 (United States)
3. Department of Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210 (United States)

In a recent series of articles, Gebremariam, Bogner, and Duguet derived a microscopically based nuclear energy density functional by applying the density matrix expansion (DME) to the Hartree-Fock energy obtained from chiral effective field theory two- and three-nucleon interactions. Owing to the structure of the chiral interactions, each coupling in the DME functional is given as the sum of a coupling constant arising from zero-range contact interactions and a coupling function of the density arising from the finite-range pion exchanges. Because the contact contributions have essentially the same structure as those entering empirical Skyrme functionals, a microscopically guided Skyrme phenomenology has been suggested in which the contact terms in the DME functional are released for optimization to finite-density observables to capture short-range correlation energy contributions from beyond Hartree-Fock. The present article is the first attempt to assess the ability of the newly suggested DME functional, which has a much richer set of density dependencies than traditional Skyrme functionals, to generate sensible and stable results for nuclear applications. The results of the first proof-of-principle calculations are given, and numerous practical issues related to the implementation of the new functional in existing Skyrme codes are discussed. Using a restricted singular value decomposition optimization procedure, it is found that the new DME functional gives numerically stable results and exhibits a small but systematic reduction of our test {chi}{sup 2} function compared to standard Skyrme functionals, thus justifying its suitability for future global optimizations and large-scale calculations.

• OSTI ID: 21499165
• Journal Information: Physical Review. C, Nuclear Physics, Vol. 82, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.82.054307; (c) 2010 The American Physical Society; ISSN 0556-2813
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
CAPTURE
CHIRALITY
COUPLING
COUPLING CONSTANTS
DENSITY
DENSITY FUNCTIONAL METHOD
DENSITY MATRIX
ELECTRON CORRELATION
ENERGY DENSITY
FIELD THEORIES
FUNCTIONALS
HARTREE-FOCK METHOD
INTERACTIONS
NUCLEAR ENERGY
NUCLEI
NUCLEONS
OPTIMIZATION
PIONS
SKYRME POTENTIAL
APPROXIMATIONS
BARYONS
BOSONS
CALCULATION METHODS
CORRELATIONS
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
ENERGY
FERMIONS
FUNCTIONS
HADRONS
MATRICES
MESONS
NUCLEON-NUCLEON POTENTIAL
PARTICLE PROPERTIES
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
POTENTIALS
PSEUDOSCALAR MESONS
VARIATIONAL METHODS