Occupation number-based energy functional for nuclear masses

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new energy functional based on shell-model occupation numbers to accurately compute nuclear masses and radii across the nuclear chart, achieving a low deviation from experimental data.

Contribution

It presents a novel occupation number-based energy functional derived from Hohenberg-Kohn theory, fitted to nuclear masses with 17 parameters.

Findings

Achieved a root-mean-square deviation of 1.31 MeV for nuclear masses.

Successfully computed nuclear radii using the derived occupation numbers.

Demonstrated the functional's applicability across the nuclear chart.

Abstract

We develop an energy functional with shell-model occupations as the relevant degrees of freedom and compute nuclear masses across the nuclear chart. The functional is based on Hohenberg-Kohn theory with phenomenologically motivated terms. A global fit of the 17-parameter functional to nuclear masses yields a root-mean-square deviation of \chi = 1.31 MeV. Nuclear radii are computed within a model that employs the resulting occupation numbers.