New Skyrme parametrizations to describe finite nuclei and neutron star matter with realistic effective masses. II. Adjusting the spin-dependent terms

TL;DR

This paper develops new Skyrme functionals with adjusted spin-dependent terms to eliminate ferromagnetic instabilities and improve the description of nuclear and neutron star matter, validated by microscopic calculations and applied to response functions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to independently adjust spin-dependent terms in Skyrme functionals, improving their physical realism without affecting spin saturated matter properties.

Findings

Spin-dependent properties agree with microscopic calculations.

New functionals eliminate ferromagnetic instabilities.

Application to neutron-star matter response functions.

Abstract

Many common Skyrme functionals present ferromagnetic instabilities or unrealistic density dependence of the spin-dependent Landau parameters. To solve these problems, we consider the Skyrme interaction as a density-functional rather than a density-dependent two-body force. This allows us to adjust the spin-dependent terms of the new extended Skyrme functionals of our previous paper [M. Duan and M. Urban, Phys. Rev. C 110, 065806 (2024)] independently without altering the properties of spin saturated matter. The parameters of the spin-dependent terms are determined by fitting the Landau parameters $G_0$ and $G'_0$ in neutron matter and symmetric nuclear matter and the effective-mass splitting of up and down particles in spin polarized matter to the results of microscopic calculations. Using the new parametrizations, called Sky3s and Sky4s, the spin-related properties of nuclear matter are in good agreement with the microscopic results. As an application, we compute response functions and neutrino scattering rates of neutron-star matter with the new functionals having realistic effective masses and Landau parameters.