Self-interaction errors in nuclear energy density functionals

TL;DR

This paper addresses the issue of self-interaction errors in nuclear energy density functionals, proposing a method to eliminate unphysical self-interactions in semi-local functionals, which can improve the accuracy of nuclear modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a method to remove self-interaction errors in semi-local nuclear energy density functionals, applicable to functionals with all second-order derivatives of local densities.

Findings

Method effectively eliminates self-interaction errors.

Applicable to functionals with second-order derivatives.

Guides the constraining of time-odd components.

Abstract

When applied to a single nucleon, nuclear energy density functionals may yield a non-vanishing internal energy thus implying that the nucleon is interacting with itself. It is shown how to avoid this unphysical feature for semi-local phenomenological functionals containing all possible bilinear combinations of local densities and currents up to second order in the derivatives. The method outlined in this Rapid Communication could be easily extended to functionals containing higher order terms, and could serve as a guide for constraining the time-odd part of the functional.