Nuclear Structure - Mean Field Theories - Nuclear Potential and Effective Interaction

Nuclear Potential and Effective Interaction

A large part of the practical difficulties met in mean field theories is the definition (or calculation) of the potential of the mean field itself. One can very roughly distinguish between two approaches :

• The phenomenological approach is a parameterization of the nuclear potential by an appropriate mathematical function. Historically, this procedure was applied with the greatest success by Sven Gösta Nilsson, who used as a potential a (deformed) harmonic oscillator potential. The most recent parameterizations are based on more realistic functions, which account more accurately for scattering experiments, for example. In particular the form known as the Woods Saxon potential can be mentioned.

• The self-consistent or Hartree–Fock approach aims to deduce mathematically the nuclear potential from the nucleon–nucleon interaction. This technique implies a resolution of the Schrödinger equation in an iterative fashion, since the potential depends there upon the wavefunctions to be determined. The latter are written as Slater determinants.

In the case of the Hartree–Fock approaches, the trouble is not to find the mathematical function which describes best the nuclear potential, but that which describes best the nucleon–nucleon interaction. Indeed, in contrast with atomic physics where the interaction is known (it is the Coulomb interaction), the nucleon–nucleon interaction within the nucleus is not known analytically.

There are two main reasons for this fact. First, the strong interaction acts essentially among the quarks forming the nucleons. The nucleon–nucleon interaction in vacuum is a mere consequence of the quark–quark interaction. While the latter is well understood in the framework of the Standard Model at high energies, it is much more complicated in low energies due to color confinement and asymptotic freedom. Thus there is no fundamental theory allowing one to deduce the nucleon–nucleon interaction from the quark–quark interaction. Further, even if this problem were solved, there would remain a large difference between the ideal (and conceptually simpler) case of two nucleons interacting in vacuo, and that of these nucleons interacting in the nuclear matter. To go further, it was necessary to invent the concept of effective interaction. The latter is basically a mathematical function with several arbitrary parameters, which are adjusted to agree with experimental data.