Zero-point oscillations and nuclear charge radii

Abstract

We consider the effects of ground state long-range correlations (LRC), which can be interpreted as zero-point oscillations (ZPO) of collective vibrations, on the charge root mean square (rms) radii, rc, of nuclei. We determine the magnitudes of the contributions of ZPO to rc using the collective model transition densities and the transition strengths obtained from fully self-consistent Hartree–Fock (HF)-based random phase approximation (RPA) calculations. We find that the contributions of ZPO to rc are significant and quite sensitive to the effective nucleon–nucleon interaction used in the calculations. We also demonstrate how the contributions of ZPO to rc are affected by self-consistency violations in the HF-based RPA calculations.