Beyond the quasi-particle picture in nuclear matter calculations using Green's function techniques

Abstract

Widths of low-lying states in nuclei are of the order of 30 MeV. These large widths are a consequence of the strong interactions leading to a strongly correlated many body system at the typical densities of nuclear matter. Nevertheless ’’traditional’’ Brueckner calculations treat these states as quasiparticles i.e. with spectral functions of zero widths. The width is related to the imaginary part of the selfenergy and is included selfconsistently in an extension of the Brueckner theory using T-matrix and Green's function (GF) techniques. A more general formulation applicable also to non-equilibrium systems is contained in the Kadanoff-Baym (KB) equations while still maintaining the basic many-body techniques of Brueckner theory. In the present work the two-time KB-equations are timestepped along the imaginary timeaxis to calculate the binding energy of nuclear matter as a function of density, including the spectral widths self-consistently. These zero temperature calculations are compared with quasiparticle calculations. The inclusion of the selfconsistent widths are found to add several MeV to the binding. The spectral widths are due to the long-ranged correlations. Short ranged correlations decrease rather than increase the binding. The method is easily extended to nonzero temperatures where the importance of the widths are expected to increase.