Strong-interaction isospin-symmetry breaking within the density functional theory

TL;DR

This paper extends the Skyrme interaction within density functional theory to include isospin-symmetry-breaking terms, accurately reproducing experimental mirror and triplet displacement energies and their staggering patterns.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized Skyrme model with new charge-symmetry-breaking terms that improves the description of isospin-related nuclear energies.

Findings

Accurately reproduces mirror and triplet displacement energies with ~100 keV precision.

Successfully models the A=4n versus A=4n+2 staggering of TDEs.

Extends the Skyrme interaction to include isospin-symmetry-breaking effects.

Abstract

The conventional Skyrme interaction is generalized by adding zero-range charge-symmetry-breaking and charge-independence-breaking terms, and the corresponding energy density functional is derived. It is shown that the extended model accounts for experimental values of mirror and triplet displacement energies (MDEs and TDEs) in sd-shell isospin triplets with, on average, about 100~keV precision using only two additional adjustable coupling constants. Moreover, the model is able to reproduce, for the first time, the A=4n versus A=4n+2 staggering of the TDEs.