Curved and diffuse interface effects on the nuclear surface tension

TL;DR

This paper redefines nuclear surface tension considering curved and diffuse interfaces, introducing new concepts for the tension surface and curvature correction, revealing that the Tolman length is negative and slightly dependent on Skyrme force parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to calculating nuclear surface tension with diffuse interfaces, incorporating curvature effects via the Tolman length, which was previously overlooked.

Findings

The Tolman length for nuclear drops is negative, approximately -0.36 fm.

Curvature correction depends significantly on the diffuse interface.

The approach aligns with Gibbs-Tolman concepts for sharp and diffuse surfaces.

Abstract

We redefine the surface tension coefficient for a nuclear Fermi-liquid drop with a finite diffuse layer. Following Gibbs-Tolman concept, we introduce the equimolar radius R_e of sharp surface droplet at which the surface tension is applied and the radius of tension surface R_s which provides the minimum of the surface tension coefficient \sigma. This procedure allows us to derive both the surface tension and the corresponding curvature correction (Tolman length) correctly for the curved and diffuse interface. We point out that the curvature correction depends significantly on the finite diffuse interface. This fact is missed in traditional nuclear considerations of curvature correction to the surface tension. We show that Tolman's length \xi is negative for nuclear Fermi-liquid drop. The value of the Tolman length is only slightly sensitive to the Skyrme force parametrization and equals \xi=-0.36 fm.