Low-lying Dipole Modes in 26,28Ne in the Quasiparticle Relativistic Random Phase Approximation Li-Gang Caoa and Zhong-Yu Mab,c∗ aInstitute of HighEnergyPhysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing100039, P.R.of China b China Center of Advanced Science and Technology (World Laboratory), P.O.Box 8730, Beijing 100080, P.R. of China and 5 cChina Institute of Atomic Energy, Beijing 102413, P.R. of China 0 0 (Dated: February 9, 2008) 2 n a The low-lying isovector dipole strengths in neutron rich nuclei 26Ne and 28Ne are J 6 investigated in the quasiparticle relativistic random phase approximation. Nuclear 1 ground state properties are calculated in an extended relativistic mean-field theory v 6 plusBCSmethodwherethecontribution oftheresonantcontinuum topairingcorre- 1 0 lations is properly treated. Numerical calculations are tested in the case of isovector 1 0 dipole and isoscalar quadrupole modes in the neutron rich nucleus 22O. It is found 5 0 that in present calculation low-lying isovector dipole strengths at E < 10 MeV in / x h t nuclei 26Ne and 28Ne exhaust about 4.9% and 5.8% of the Thomas-Reiche-Kuhn - l c dipole sum rule, respectively. The centroid energy of the low-lying dipole excitation u n : is located at 8.3 MeV in 26Ne and 7.9 MeV in 28Ne. v i X PACS numbers: 21.60.Jz, 24.30.Cz,24.30.Gd r a I. INTRODUCTION Nuclear giant resonances have been known since 50 years ago for the dipole mode and more than 30 years for the other modes. But the research field was limited to the excitations of nuclei along the β-stability line[1, 2, 3]. Recently, the radioactive ion beam physics has become one of the frontiers in nuclear physics. It offers the possibility to broaden the study of the giant resonance to weakly bound nuclei. Nuclei close to the drip line present some unique properties: a small separation energy of the valence nucleon, the smearing density distribution and a strong coupling between the bound ∗ alsoCenterofTheoreticalNuclearPhysics,NationalLaboratoryofHeavyIonAcceleratorofLanzhou, Lanzhou 730000 and Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080 2 state and the particle continuum. Those exotic properties attract more attentions both experimentally and theoretically. Low-lying electric dipole modes may appear in these weakly bound nuclei, which are so-called Pygmy Dipole Resonances. Although carrying only a small fraction of the full dipole strength these states are of particular interest because they are expected to reflect the motion of the neutron skin against the core formed with an equal number of protons and neutrons. Recent experiments have shown that the increase of the dipole strength at low energies in neutron-rich nuclei could affect the corresponding radiative neutron capture cross section considerably[4], which has a significance in astrophysics. Over the last decade, much experimental and theoretical efforts have been dedicated to investigate properties of the low-lying dipole mode in light neutron-rich nuclei, in particular, to answer whether or not these dipole excitations can be attributed to the collectivity[5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]. Recently, Beaumel et al.[17] have measured the inelastic scattering of 26Ne + 208Pb using a 60 MeV/u 26Ne secondary beam at RIKEN. This reaction is dominated by Coulomb excitations and selective for E1 transitions. The experimental data are now under analysis[18]. Asasubsequent work, theywillcontinue theexperiment using amore neutron rich projectile 28Ne. Therefore the theoretical investigation of low-lying dipole modesin26Neand28Nehasapracticalsignificance. 26Neand28Neareneutronrichnuclei, whose Fermi surfaces are close to the particle continuum. Therefore the description of those nuclei has to explicitly include the coupling between bound states and the particle continuum. The contribution of the particle continuum to the nuclear properties at low-energies can mainly be attributed to a few resonant states[19, 20, 21, 22, 23]. On the other hand, it is well known that pairing correlations play an important role in describing properties of open shell nuclei. In order to depict the collective excitations of those nuclei pairing correlations have to be taken into account. Recently, a number of theoretical works has devoted to study the properties of low-lying dipole modes in the framework of the quasiparticle random phase approximation (QRPA)[4, 24, 25, 26, 27]. Paar and his co-workers[28] have studied the evolution of the low-lying dipole strength in Sn-isotopes in the quasiparticle relativistic random phase approximation (QRRPA) in the configuration space formalism. In this paper, we aim at the investigation of the properties of low-lying dipole modes in neutron rich nuclei 26Ne and 28Ne in the QRRPA which is formulated in the response function method. The QRRPA is an extension of the fully consistent RRPA [29, 30, 31] 3 by taking into account the effect of pairing correlations. Aconsistent treatment of RRPA within the RMF approximation requires the configurations including not only the pairs formed from the occupied Fermi states and unoccupied states but also the pairs formed from the Dirac states and occupied Fermi states. It has been emphasized in Refs.[29, 30] that the inclusion of configurations built from the positive energy states in the Fermi sea and negative energy states in the Dirac sea is essential to give correctly a quantitative description in the excitation energies of isoscalar giant multipole resonances as well as to ensure thecurrent conservation anddecouple thespurious states. Inpresent calculations, wepaymoreattentionstotheenergyweighted moment m andthecentroid energyofthe 1 low-lying dipole strength as well as the contribution of states around the Fermi surface to the low-lying dipole strength. Although some theoretical investigations show that 26Ne and 28Ne are deformed and strongly anharmonic[32, 33, 34], a spherical symmetry is assumed in the present investigation. In order to show the applicability of the method with a spherical assumption we also study the quadrupole excitations in these nuclei and compare the calculated position and transition strength of the lowest 2+ states with the experimental data. Inthiswork, thegroundstatepropertiesofneutronrichnuclei26Neand28Nearecalcu- latedinthe extended relativistic mean fieldandBardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (RMF+BCS) approxiamtion[22], where the resonant continuum is properly treated. The empirical pairing gaps deduced from odd-even mass differences are adopted in the BCS calculation in this work. All calculations are performed with the parameter set NL3[35], which gives a good description of not only the ground state properties[36] but also the collective giant resonance[29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39]. The paper is arranged as follows. In Sec.II we present the formalism of the QRRPA in the extended RMF+BCS ground state in the response function approach. A test of the numerical calculation of the QRRPA in the neutron rich nucleus 22O is performed and compared with the results in Ref[28], which is given in Sec.III. In Sec.IV the ground state properties of 26Ne and 28Ne are studied in the extended RMF+BCS approach. Then the QRRPA in the response function formalism is applied to study the properties of isovector giant dipole resonances in nuclei 26Ne and 28Ne. Finally we give a brief summary in Sec.V. 4 II. THE QUASIPARTICLE RELATIVISTIC RANDOM PHASE APPROXIMATION There are usually two methods to obtain the RPA strength in the study of nuclear collective excitations. One is working in a particle-hole configuration space and solving the RPA equation by a matrix diagonalization method[30], and another is based on the linear response theory[40]. In the response function formalism one solves a Bethe- Salpeter equation by inversion. In both methods the starting point is a self-consistent solution of the nuclear ground state. In this paper we shall work in the response function formalism and study nuclear dipole excitations in neutron rich nuclei. In the RRPA calculation we first solve the Dirac equation and equations of meson fields self-consistently in the coordinate space. The continuum is discretized by ex- panding nucleon spinors on a complete set basis, such as eigenfunctions in a spherical harmonic oscillator potential. Those single particle states are used to build the RRPA configurations: a set of particle-hole pairs(ph) and pairs formed from the negative energy state in the Dirac sea and the hole state in the Fermi sea(αh). The response function of a quantum system to an external field is given by the imag- inary part of the polarization operator: 1 R(Q,Q;k,k′;E) = ImΠR(Q,Q;k,k′;E) , (1) π where Q is an external field operator. The RRPA polarization operator is obtained by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation: Π(Q,Q;k,k′,E) = Π (Q,Q;k,k′,E)− g2 d3k d3k Π (Q,Γi;k,k ,E) 0 i 1 2 0 1 i Z X D (k ,k ,E)Π(Γ ,Q;k ,k′,E) , (2) i 1 2 i 2 In the RRPA, the residual particle-hole interactions are obtained from the same La- grangian as in the description of the nuclear ground state. They are generated by ex- changing various mesons: the isoscalar scalar meson σ, the isoscalar vector meson ω and the isovector vector meson ρ. Therefore, in Eq.(2) the sum i runs over σ, ω and ρ mesons, and g and D are the corresponding coupling constants and meson propagators. i i They are Γi = 1 for σ meson and Γi = γµ,γµτ for ω and ρ mesons, respectively. The 3 meson propagators in the non-linear model are non-local in the momentum space, and thereforehave to becalculatednumerically. The detailedexpressions ofnon-linear meson 5 propagators D (k ,k ,E) can be found in Ref.[40]. Π is the unperturbed polarization i 1 2 0 operator, which in a spectral representation has the following retarded form: ΠR(P,Q;k,k′;E) 0 (4π)2 hφ kP kφ ihφ kQ kφ i hφ kP kφ ihφ kQ kφ i = (−1)jh+jp h L p p L h − p L h h L p 2L+1 E −(ε −ε )+iη E +(ε −ε )+iη ( " p h p h # h,p X hφ kP kφ ihφ kQ kφ i hφ kP kφ ihφ kQ kφ i + (−1)jh+jα h L α α L h − α L h h L α (3,) E −(ε −ε )+iη E +(ε −ε )+iη h,α (cid:20) α h α h (cid:21)) X The unperturbed polarization operator includes not only the positive energy particle- hole pairs but also pairs formed from the Dirac sea states and Fermi sea states. In Refs.[29, 30] the authors show that the inclusion of configurations built from the positive energy states in the Fermi sea and negative energy states in the Dirac sea is essential to give correctly a quantitative description in the excitation energies of isoscalar giant multipole resonances as well as to ensure the current conservation and decouple the spurious states. The pairing correlation andcoupling to the continuum areimportant for exotic nuclei. A proper treatment of the resonant continuum to pairing correlations has been recently investigated in the Hartree-Fock (HF) Bogoliubov or the HF+BCS approximation[19, 20, 21] and the extended RMF+BCS approximation[22, 23]. It shows that the simple BCS approximation in the resonant continuum with a proper boundary condition works well in the description of ground state properties even for neutron rich nuclei. We shall treat the pairing correlation in the BCS approximation in this work and the resonant continuum is calculated by imposing an asymptotic scattering boundary condition. When pairing correlations are taken into account, the elementary excitation is a two- quasiparticle excitation, rather than a particle-hole excitation. The unperturbed polar- ization operator in the QRRPA in the response function formalism can be constructed in a similar way: ΠR(P,Q;k,k′;E) 0 (4π)2 hφ kP kφ ihφ kQ kφ i hφ kP kφ ihφ kQ kφ i = (−1)jα+jβA α L β β L α − β L α α L β αβ 2L+1 E −(E +E )+iη E +(E +E )+iη ( " α β α β # α,β X hφ kP kφ ihφ kQ kφ i hφ kP kφ ihφ kQ kφ i + (−1)jα+jβυ2 α L β β L h − β L α α L β (,4) α E −(E +λ−ε )+iη E +(E +λ−ε )+iη  " α β α β # Xα,β   6 with A = (u υ +(−1)Lυ u )2(1+δ )−1 , (5) αβ α β α β αβ where υ2 is the occupation probability and u2 = 1 − υ2. E = (ε −λ)2 +∆2 is α α α α α the quasiparticle energy, where λ and ∆ are the Fermi energy andppairing correlation gap, respectively. In the BCS approximation, the φ is the eigenfunction of the single α particle Hamiltonian with an eigenvalue ε . In Eq.(4), terms in the first square bracket α represent those excitations with one quasiparticle in fully or partial occupied states and one quasiparticle in partial occupied or unoccupied states. Terms in the second square bracket describe all excitations between positive energy fully or partial occupied states and negative energy states in the Dirac sea. For unoccupied positive energy states outside the pairing active space, their energies are E = ε −λ, occupation probabilities β β υ2 = 0 and u2 = 1. For fully occupied positive energy states, the quasiparticle energy β β and the occupation probability are E = λ − ε and υ2 = 1 in Eq.(4). States in the α α α Dirac sea are not involved in pairing correlations. Therefore those quantities υ2 and u2 β β are set to be 0 and 1, respectively. Once the unperturbed polarization operator in the quasiparticle scheme is built, the QRRPA response function can be obtained by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation (2) as usually done in the RRPA. III. NUMERICAL CALCULATION AND TEST OF THE QRRPA In this section, we first check the validity of the present QRRPA calculations. We apply the QRRPA to calculate the response function of the isovector giant dipole res- onance(IVGDR) and the isoscalar giant quadrupole resonance(ISGQR) in the neutron rich nucleus 22O . Similar calculations for the nucleus 22O were recently performed by Paar et al[28] in the framework of the Relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov(RHB) + QRRPA in the configuration space formalism. The ground state properties of the nucleus 22O are calculated in the extended RMF+BCS approach[22] with the parameter set NL3. The neutron pairing gap is ob- tained from the experimental binding energies of neighboring nuclei, ∆ = 1.532 MeV. n In the QRRPA calculation particle-hole residual interactions are taken from the same ef- fective interaction NL3, which is used in the description of the ground state of 22O. Fully occupied states and states in the pairing active space are calculated self-consistently in the extended RMF+BCS approach in the coordinate space. The BCS active space is 7 0.7 R 0.6 22 D RRPA O G QRRPA V 0.5 I ) 1 0.4 - V e M 0.3 2 m 0.2 f 2 e ( 0.1 R 0.0 0 10 20 30 40 E(MeV) FIG. 1: IVGDR strengths in 22O. The solid curve represents the result calculated in the QRRPA approach. The result performed in the RRPA approach is shown by a dashed curve. All results are calculated with the effective Lagrangian parameter set NL3. taken as all states in the sd shell as well as 1f state, which is a resonant state in 22O. 7/2 A scattering boundary condition is imposed in the resonant continuum. Unoccupied states outside of the pairing active space are obtained by solving the Dirac equation in the expansion on a set of the harmonic oscillator basis. The response functions of the nuclear system to the external operator are calculated at the limit of zero momentum transfer. It is also necessary to include the space-like parts of vector mesons in the QR- RPA calculations, although they do not play role in the ground state[41]. The consistent treatment guarantees the conservation of the vector current. In Fig.1, we show the response function of the IVGDR mode in 22O calculated in the RRPA and QRRPA approaches. The isovector dipole operator used in the calculations is[42]: Z N N Z Q = e r Y (rˆ)−e r Y (rˆ) , (6) i 1M i i 1M i A A i=1 i=1 X X which excites an L = 1 type electric (spin-non-flip) ∆T = 1 and ∆S = 0 giant resonance with Jπ = 1−. The spurious state for exotic nuclei may appear at the energy around 1 MeV in the IVGDR strength in numerical calculations due to the mixture of the isoscalar 8 mode[43]. In our present calculations, the spurious state is removed by slightly adjusting the coupling constant of the σ meson in the residual interaction by less than 1%, that does not affect the general results. In general, the IVGDR strengths in light stable nuclei are expected to be fragmented substantially. This also occurs in the response function of the IVGDR in neutron rich nuclei. More fragmented distributions around the GDR region in 22O are observed in Fig.1. In additiontothe characteristic peakof theIVGDRatthe energy around20MeV, the low-lying dipole strength appears at the excitation energy below 10 MeV. It can be seen that the inclusion of pairing correlations enhances the low-lying dipole strength and has a slight effect on the strength at the normal dipole resonance. This illustrates the importance of including pairing correlations in the study of the low-lying isovector dipole strength in neutron rich nuclei. The effect of pairing correlations on the isovector dipole strength in 22O observed in our calculation is consistent with that obtained in the RHB+QRRPA in the configuration formalism (Fig.2 of Ref.[28]). 35 R 30 RRPA 22 O Q QRRPA G 25 S I ) 20 1 - V e 15 M 4 m 10 f 2 e 5 ( R 0 0 10 20 30 40 E(MeV) FIG. 2: ISGQR strengths in 22O. Notations are the same as in Fig.1. The response functions of the ISGQR mode in 22O calculated in the RRPA and QRRPA approaches are shown in Fig.2. In present calculation the isoscalar quadrupole 9 TABLE I: The energy weighted moment m1 at Ex < 60 MeV for the electric isovector dipole andisoscalar quadrupoleexcitations in22O.DCrepresentstheresultfromdoublecommutators in the non-relativistic approach. DC m1(Ex <60 MeV) RRPA QRRPA IVGDR(e2fm2MeV) 75.9 82.08 81.71 ISGQR(e2fm4MeV) 2018 1971 2159 operator is taken from Ref.[42]: A Z 2 Q = e r Y (rˆ) , (7) A i 2M i i=1 X Theinclusion ofpairing correlationsshifts thelow-lyingquadrupole strengthtohigher energy region and enhances the low-lying quadrupole strength, while this only slightly affect the strength at the normal giant resonance region. A similar result on the isoscalar quadrupole strength in 22O has been observed in Fig.3 of Ref.[28] in the framework of the RHB+QRRPA. In Table I we show the energy weighted moment m at E <60 MeV for electric 1 x isovector dipole and isoscalar quadrupole excitations in 22O. DC represents the result from double commutators in the non-relativistic approach. In the isovector dipole mode the value corresponds to the Thomas-Reiche-Kuhn (TRK) dipole sum rule. It is shown that the m obtained by the integration of the RPA strength till to 60 MeV is slightly 1 larger than that obtained by the double commutator (DC) in the dipole mode. While in the quadrupole mode both RRPA and QRRPA results are close to the DC value. IV. ISOVECTOR DIPOLE EXCITATION IN NEUTRON RICH NUCLEI 26NE AND 28NE A. Ground state properties of nuclei 26Ne and 28Ne Ground state properties of nuclei 26Ne and 28Ne are studied in the extended RMF+BCS with the parameter set NL3, where a spherical symmetry is assumed. The continuum is calculated by imposing a scattering boundary condition and the width of the resonant state is not considered in this work. Constant pairing gaps are adopted in 10 TABLE II: Neutron and proton pairing gaps in 26Ne and 28Ne, and calculated ground state properties: neutron and proton Fermi energies, binding energies as well as neutron and proton rms radii. Values in the parenthesis are the corresponding experimental data of the binding energy[44]. 26Ne 28Ne ∆ (MeV) 1.436 1.400 n ∆ (MeV) 2.025 2.101 p λ (MeV) -5.325 -4.290 n λ (MeV) -14.168 -16.247 p E (MeV) 201.8(201.6) 210.5(206.9) B r (fm) 3.179 3.348 n r (fm) 2.784 2.833 p the calculation of pairing correlations, which are obtained from the experimental binding energies of neighboring nuclei by the formula: 1 ∆ = (B(Z −2,N)−4B(Z −1,N)+6B(Z,N)−4B(Z +1,N)+B(Z +2,N)) , p 8 (8) 1 ∆ = (B(Z,N −2)−4B(Z,N −1)+6B(Z,N)−4B(Z,N +1)+B(Z,N +2)) . n 8 (9) In our calculations, the neutron pairing active space in nuclei 26Ne and 28Ne includes states up to the N = 28 major shell and 2p state, which are 1d , 2s , 1d , 2p , 3/2 5/2 1/2 3/2 3/2 and 1f . The BCS active space for proton is taken as all states in the sd shell. In 7/2 Table II we list the neutron and proton pairing gaps in nuclei 26Ne and 28Ne derived from Eqs.(8,9) and the calculated ground state properties, including neutron and proton Fermi energies, total binding energies as well as the neutron and proton rms radii. The values in the parenthesis are corresponding experimental binding energies taken from Ref.[44]. Neutron single particle energies and BCS occupation probabilities for those states near the neutron Fermi energy are shown in Table III, where levels (2p and 3/2 1f ) with positive energies are the single particle resonant states. 7/2