Structure of the phonon vacuum state

TL;DR

This paper develops a variational approach to better understand the nuclear ground state by optimizing the phonon vacuum state, improving predictions over traditional methods like RPA, especially regarding overbinding issues.

Contribution

It introduces a variational method for the phonon vacuum state that enhances ground state predictions beyond the RPA and its extensions.

Findings

Removes overbinding problem in nuclear ground states

Provides improved ground and excited state energies

Accurately predicts particle occupation numbers

Abstract

The action of the long-range residual force on the expectation value of observables in the nuclear ground states is evaluated by finding optimal values for the coefficients of the canonical transformation which connects the phonon vacuum state with the (quasi-)particle ground-state. After estimating the improvements over the predictions of the independent-particle approximation we compare the ground-state wave functions, obtained using the presented approach, with those, obtained using the conventional random phase approximation (RPA) and its extended version. The problem with overbinding of the nuclear ground state calculated using the RPA is shown to be removed if one sticks to the prescriptions of the present approach. The reason being that the latter conforms to the original variational formulation. Calculations are performed within the two-level Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model in which we present results for the ground and first excited state energies as well as for the ground-state particle occupation numbers.