A Powerful New Energy Density Functional

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new energy density functional based on the quark meson coupling model, which accurately predicts nuclear properties across the periodic table with few parameters, including for super-heavy nuclei.

Contribution

It presents a physically motivated energy density functional with minimal parameters that achieves high accuracy in nuclear property predictions.

Findings

Accurately reproduces nuclear properties across the periodic table.

Predicts properties of super-heavy nuclei not included in the fit.

Demonstrates the effectiveness of a physically motivated, minimal-parameter model.

Abstract

We describe the most recent energy density functional derived within the quark meson coupling model. Although fit to the binding energies and charge radii of just seventy magic nuclei, the accuracy with which it reproduces nuclear properties across the entire periodic table is outstanding. As well as outlining a number of those results, we present an argument explaining why having a physically motivated model with a small number of parameters is especially desirable as one seeks to make predictions in new regions of N and Z. As an example we show the predictions for known super-heavy nuclei that were not included in the fit.