Misfits in Skyrme-Hartree-Fock

TL;DR

This paper critically examines five fundamental issues in the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock model, highlighting formal and practical challenges in its application to nuclear physics, especially for super-heavy elements and fission processes.

Contribution

It identifies and discusses five key problems in the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock scheme, emphasizing areas needing further theoretical and practical improvements.

Findings

Inability to treat Skyrme-Hartree-Fock as a true interaction

Potential inconsistencies in correlation corrections like center-of-mass

Challenges in accurately modeling giant dipole resonances and super-heavy nuclei

Abstract

We address very briefly five critical points in the context of the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock (SHF) scheme: 1) the impossibility to consider it as an interaction, 2) a possible inconsistency of correlation corrections as, e.g., the center-of-mass correction, 3) problems to describe the giant dipole resonance (GDR) simultaneously in light and heavy nuclei, 4) deficiencies in the extrapolation of binding energies to super-heavy elements (SHE), and 5) a yet inappropriate trend in fission life-times when going to the heaviest SHE. While the first two points have more a formal bias, the other three points have practical implications and wait for solution.