The Renormalized Tensor Interaction in a Nucleus

TL;DR

This paper investigates the overstrength of the tensor interaction in nuclear models and suggests that reducing its strength improves agreement with experimental data across various nuclear phenomena.

Contribution

It demonstrates that decreasing the tensor interaction by about a factor of two leads to better nuclear structure predictions and examines second order tensor effects for improved modeling.

Findings

Reducing tensor interaction improves agreement with experimental data.

Second order tensor effects contribute to effective weaker tensor interactions.

Adjusted tensor interaction better explains nuclear properties like quadrupole moments and decay matrix elements.

Abstract

We show several examples were the tensor interaction of the lowest order G matrix in a nucleus is too strong. The examples include the quadrupole moment of $^{6}$Li, the isosplitting of the lowest 0$^{-}$ states in $^{16}$O, the near vanishing Gamow-Teller matrix element in the weak decay of the J=0 T=1 state of $^{14}$O to the J=1 T=0 ground state of $^{14}$N, and the magnitude of the deformation of $^{12}$C. It would appear that we could get better results by decreasing the tensor interaction strength by about a factor of two. We then examine the simple estimates of Gerry Brown concerning second order tensor effects. We note that for the triplet even channel the combination of first and second order tensor does indeed yield an effective weaker tensor interaction and helps to get better agreement with experiment.