Nonlocal energy density functionals for pairing and beyond-mean-field calculations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new class of nonlocal energy density functionals based on regularized two-body pseudopotentials, improving the description of nuclear properties and enabling beyond-mean-field calculations.

Contribution

It develops a sequence of regularized pseudopotentials up to N2LO for nuclear EDFs, addressing self-interaction issues and extending applicability beyond mean-field.

Findings

Accurately describes infinite nuclear matter

Effective for finite open-shell nuclei

Preliminary step towards including three-body pseudopotentials

Abstract

We propose to use two-body regularized finite-range pseudopotential to generate nuclear energy density functional (EDF) in both particle-hole and particle-particle channels, which makes it free from self-interaction and self-pairing, and also free from singularities when used beyond mean field. We derive a sequence of pseudopotentials regularized up to next-to-leading order (NLO) and next-to-next-to-leading order (N2LO), which fairly well describe infinite-nuclear-matter properties and finite open-shell paired and/or deformed nuclei. Since pure two-body pseudopotentials cannot generate sufficiently large effective mass, the obtained solutions constitute a preliminary step towards future implementations, which will include, e.g., EDF terms generated by three-body pseudopotentials.