Microscopic-macroscopic level densities for low excitation energies

TL;DR

This paper derives a microscopic-macroscopic level density formula for strongly interacting Fermi systems, incorporating additional conserved quantities, and demonstrates its consistency with known limits and experimental data for nuclei.

Contribution

It introduces an extended level density model using semiclassical theory that accounts for multiple integrals of motion and shell effects, improving upon traditional Fermi gas models.

Findings

Derived a new level density formula involving Bessel functions.

Showed the model matches Fermi gas and combinatoric limits.

Fitted the model to nuclear data revealing shell and pairing effects.

Abstract

Level density $\rho(E,{\bf Q})$ is derived within the micro-macroscopic approximation (MMA) for a system of strongly interacting Fermi particles with the energy $E$ and additional integrals of motion ${\bf Q}$, in line with several topics of the universal and fruitful activity of A.S. Davydov. Within the extended Thomas Fermi and semiclassical periodic orbit theory beyond the Fermi-gas saddle-point method we obtain $\rho\propto I_\nu(S)/S^\nu$, where $I_\nu(S)$ is the modified Bessel function of the entropy $S$. For small shell-structure contribution one finds $\nu=\kappa/2+1$, where $\kappa$ is the number of additional integrals of motion. This integer number is a dimension of ${\bf Q}$, ${\bf Q}=\{N, Z, ...\}$ for the case of two-component atomic nuclei, where $N$ and $Z$ are the numbers of neutron and protons, respectively. For much larger shell structure contributions, one obtains, $\nu=\kappa/2+2$. The MMA level density $\rho$ reaches the well-known Fermi gas asymptote for large excitation energies, and the finite micro-canonical combinatoric limit for low excitation energies. The additional integrals of motion can be also the projection of the angular momentum of a nuclear system for nuclear rotations of deformed nuclei, number of excitons for collective dynamics, and so on. Fitting the MMA total level density, $\rho(E,{\bf Q})$, for a set of the integrals of motion ${\bf Q}=\{N, Z\}$, to experimental data on a long nuclear isotope chain for low excitation energies, one obtains the results for the inverse level-density parameter $K$, which differs significantly from those of neutron resonances, due to shell, isotopic asymmetry, and pairing effects.