The energy density formalism in nuclei

Abstract

A revised version of the energy density formalism is presented which allows one to describe the bulk properties of nuclei accurately. As far as the binding energies are concerned, the approach is shown to be competitive with semiempirical mass formulas. The nuclear radii are also in good agreement with experiment. Calculations of the electron scattering differential cross section at medium energy show, however, that the surface of charge distributions is not yet satisfactory. An extension of the functional giving the total energy density is proposed in which the single-particle structure of nuclei is taken into account. In a first step the many-body wavefunction corresponds to a Slater determinant of single-particle wavefunction but extension to more general wavefunction is straight forward. This extended approach is similar to the local density approximation.