Many-body wave functions

Abstract

In the past few years, we developed many-body variational wave functions that allow one to treat pairing and particle-hole two-body interactions on an equal footing. The complexity of these wave functions depends on the number of levels included in the valence space, but does not depend on the number of nucleons in the system. By using residual interaction strengths (e.g. the quadrupole interaction strength or pairing interaction strength) as generator coordinates, one gets many different wave functions, each having a different expectation value for the relevant interaction mode. These wave functions are particularly useful when one is dealing with a situation in which the mean-field approximation is inadequate. Because the same basis states are used in the construction of the many-body wave functions, it is possible to calculate overlaps and interaction matrix elements for the many-body wave functions (which are not in general orthogonal) easily. The valence space can contain a large number of single-particle basis states, when there are constants of motion that can be used to break the levels up into groups. We added a cranking term to the many-body Hamiltonian and modified the projection procedure to get states of good signature before variation. In our present implementation, each group is limited to eight pairs of single-particle levels. We are working on ways of increasing the number of levels that can be included in each group. We are also working on including particle-particle residual interaction modes, in addition to pairing, in our Hamiltonian.