On microscopic theory of radiative nuclear reaction characteristics

TL;DR

This paper reviews the microscopic theory of nuclear reactions involving gamma-rays, emphasizing the importance of phonon coupling effects in accurately predicting reaction properties and comparing different nuclear level density models.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent QTBA approach incorporating phonon coupling effects, improving the explanation of experimental data over standard models.

Findings

Phonon coupling significantly affects photon strength functions.

Microscopic HFB+combinatorial NLD models outperform phenomenological models.

Self-consistent microscopic models are crucial for nuclear astrophysics applications.

Abstract

A survey of some results in the modern microscopic theory of properties of nuclear reactions with gamma-rays is given. First of all, we discuss the impact of phonon coupling (PC) on the photon strength function (PSF) because it represents the most natural physical source of additional strength found for Sn isotopes in recent experiments that could not be explained within the stan- dard HFB+QRPA approach. The self-consistent version of the Extended Theory of Finite Fermi Systems in the Quasiparticle Time Blocking Approximation, or simply QTBA, is applied. It uses the HFB mean field and includes both the QRPA and PC effects on the basis of the SLy4 Skyrme force. With our microscopic E1 PSFs, the following properties have been calculated for many stable and unstable even-even semi-magic Sn and Ni isotopes as well as for double-magic 132Sn and 208Pb using the reaction codes EMPIRE and TALYS with several nuclear level density (NLD) models: 1) the neutron capture cross sections, 2) the corresponding neutron capture gamma spectra, 3) the av- erage radiative widths of neutron resonances. In all the properties considered, the PC contribution turned out to be significant, as compared with the standard QRPA one, and necessary to explain the available experimental data. The results with the phenomenological so-called generalized super- fluid NLD model turned out to be worse, on the whole, than those obtained with the microscopic HFB+combinatorial NLD model. Finally, we also discuss the modern microscopic NLD models based on the self-consistent HFB method and show their relevance to explain experimental data as compared with the phenomeno- logical models. The use of these self-consistent microscopic approaches is of particular relevance for nuclear astrophysics, but also for the study of double-magic nuclei.