Nuclear kinetic density from ab initio theory

Journal Article · 06 February 2019 · Physical Review. C

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevc.99.024305 · OSTI ID:1565772

Gennari, Michael ^[1]; Navrátil, Petr ^[2]

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1. Univ. of Waterloo, ON (Canada)
2. TRIUMF, Vancouver, BC (Canada)

The nuclear kinetic density is one of many fundamental, nonobservable quantities in density functional theory (DFT) dependent on the nonlocal nuclear density. Often, approximations may be made when computing the density that may result in spurious contributions in other DFT quantities. With the ability to compute the nonlocal nuclear density from ab initio wave functions, it is now possible to estimate effects of such spurious contributions. Herein, we derive the kinetic density using ab initio nonlocal scalar one-body nuclear densities computed within the no-core shell model (NCSM) approach, utilizing two- and three-nucleon chiral interactions as the sole input. The ability to compute translationally invariant nonlocal densities allows us to gauge the impact of the spurious center-of-mass (c.m.) contributions in DFT quantities, such as the kinetic density, and provide ab initio insight into refining energy density functionals. The nonlocal nuclear densities are derived from the NCSM one-body densities calculated in second quantization. We present a review of c.m. contaminated and translationally invariant nuclear densities. We then derive an analytic expression for the kinetic density using these nonlocal densities, producing an ab initio kinetic density. The ground-state nonlocal densities of ${}_{4,6,8}\mathrm{He},{}_{12}\mathrm{C}$, and ${}_{16}\mathrm{O}$ are used to compute the kinetic densities of the aforementioned nuclei. The impact of c.m. removal techniques in the density are discussed and compared to a procedure applied in DFT. The results of this work can be extended to other fundamental quantities in DFT. The use of a general nonlocal density allows for the calculation of fundamental quantities taken as input in theories such as DFT. This allows benchmarking c.m. removal procedures and provides a bridge for comparison between ab initio and DFT many-body techniques.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) (SC-21); Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) (Canada)
• OSTI ID: 1565772
• Report Number(s): arXiv:1808.10537v2
• Journal Information: Physical Review. C, Journal Name: Physical Review. C Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 99; ISSN PRVCAN; ISSN 2469-9985
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English