Addressing spectroscopic quality of covariant density functional theory

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the spectroscopic accuracy of covariant density functional theory, highlighting improvements from particle-vibration coupling and identifying remaining discrepancies and uncertainties in nuclear predictions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the spectroscopic quality of covariant density functional theory, including the impact of particle-vibration coupling and the role of uncertainties in nuclear predictions.

Findings

Particle-vibration coupling improves single-particle energy descriptions.

Remaining differences indicate missing physics in current models.

Uncertainties in drip line predictions are sensitive to single-particle energy uncertainties.

Abstract

The spectroscopic quality of covariant density functional theory has been accessed by analyzing the accuracy and theoretical uncertainties in the description of spectroscopic observables. Such analysis is first presented for the energies of the single-particle states in spherical and deformed nuclei. It is also shown that the inclusion of particle-vibration coupling improves the description of the energies of predominantly single-particle states in medium and heavy-mass spherical nuclei. However, the remaining differences between theory and experiment clearly indicate missing physics and missing terms in covariant energy density functionals. The uncertainties in the predictions of the position of two-neutron drip line sensitively depend on the uncertainties in the prediction of the energies of the single-particle states. On the other hand, many spectroscopic observables in well deformed nuclei at ground state and finite spin only weakly depend on the choice of covariant energy density functional.