Microscopic nuclear dissipation: (II). Damping of collective states in subspaces which include 2p-2h states

Abstract

We have formulated a microscopic, nonperturbative, time reversible model which exhibits a dissipative decay of collective motion for times short compared to the system's Poincaré time. The model assumes an RPA approximate description of the initial collective state within a restricted subspace, then traces its time evolution when an additional subspace is coupled to the restricted subspace by certain simplified matrix elements. It invokes no statistical assumptions. The damping of the collective motion occurs via real tansitions from the collective state to other more complicated nuclear states of the same energy. It corresponds therefore to the so called “one-body” long mean free path limit of nuclear dissipation when the collective state describes a surface vibration. When the simplest RPA approximation is used, this process associates the dissipation with the escape width for direct particle emission to the continuum. When the more detailed second RPA is used, it associates the dissipation with the spreading width for transitions to the 2p-2h components of the nuclear compound states as well. The energy loss rate for sharp n-phonon initial states is proportional to the total collective energy, unlike the dissipation of a classical damped oscillator, where it is proportional to the kinetic energy only. However, for coherent, multi-phonon wave packets, which explicitly describe the time-dependent oscillations of the mean field, dissipation proportional only to the kinetic energy is obtained. Canonical coordinates for the collective degree of freedom are explicitly introduced and a nonlinear frictional hamiltonian to describe such systems is specified by the requirement that it yield the same time dependence for the collective motion as the microscopic model. Thus, for the first time a descriptive nonlinear hamiltonian is derived explicitly from the underlying microscopic model of a nuclear system.