4 pages, 4 figures, talk given at CIPANP 2009, 10th Conference on the Intersections of Particle and Nuclear Physics, May 26 - May 31, 2009, Torrey Pines Hilton, San Diego, California, USA
We estimate the $D$, $\overline{D}$ and $J/Ψ$ meson potentials in nuclei. $J/Ψ$-nuclear potential (self-energy) is calculated based on the color-singlet mechanism, by the $DD$ and $DD^*$ meson loops. This consistently includes the in-medium properties of $D$ and $D^*$ mesons. The potential obtained for the $J/Ψ$ meson is attractive, and it is complementary to the attraction obtained from the color-octet gluon-based mechanism. We predict that the $D^-$ and $J/Ψ$ mesons will be bound in nuclei under proper conditions.
We present a collection of selected phenomena observed in J/Psi production from proton-nucleus and heavy ion collisions at energies, ranging between the SPS and LHC. The emphasis is placed on the related theoretical ideas or techniques, which are either not widely known, or offer an alternative explanation to the observed nuclear effects.
In order to understand the J/psi suppression arising from the possible occurrence of the quark-gluon plasma in high-energy heavy-ion collisions, it is necessary to have a comprehensive picture how the J/psi and its precursors are produced, what their properties after production are, and how the J/psi and its precursors propagate inside nuclear matter. There are unresolved questions in the descriptions of J/psi production and propagation. We outline some of these questions and discuss the approaches for their resolution.
We calculate the inclusive J/Psi production in heavy ion collisions including the effects of gluon saturation in the wave functions of the colliding nuclei. We argue that the dominant production mechanism in proton--nucleus and nucleus--nucleus collisions for heavy nuclei is different from the one in hadron-hadron interactions. We find that the rapidity distribution of primary J/Psi production is more peaked around midrapidity than the analogous distribution in elementary pp collisions. We discuss the consequences of this fact on the experimentally observed J/Psi suppression in Au-Au collision…
The nonlinear effect of gluon depletion in the collision of large nuclei can be large. It is due to multiple scatterings among comoving partons initiated by primary scattering of partons in the colliding nuclei. The effect can give rise to substantial suppression of $J/ψ$ production in very large nuclei, even if the linear depletion effect is insignificant for the collisions of nuclei of smaller sizes. This mechanism offers a natural explanation of the enhanced suppression in the Pb-Pb data recently observed by NA50.
Nuclear effects for J/Psi production in pA collisions are controlled by the coherence and color transparency effects. Color transparency onsets when the time of formation of the charmonium wave function becomes longer than the inter-nucleon spacing. In this energy regime the effective break-up cross section for a c-cbar dipole depends on energy and nuclear path length, and agrees well with data from fixed target experiments, both in magnitude and energy dependence. At higher energies of RHIC and LHC coherence in c-cbar pair production leads to charm quark shadowing which is a complement to the…
Using a hadron-string cascade model, JPCIAE, we study the effect of nuclear deformation on J/Psi suppression in the collision of uranium nuclei at 200A GeV/c. We find that the J/Psi survival probability is much smaller if the major axes of both deformed nuclei are along the beam direction than if they are perpendicular to the beam direction.
We study general features of three-meson bound states using the Y(4660) as an example. Here the Y(4660) is assumed to be either a two-body bound state of the f_0(980), itself a bound state of K and Kbar, and the psi'= psi(2s), or a three-body bound state of psi', K, and Kbar. In particular, we investigate in detail the interplay of the various scales inherent in the problem, namely the f_0 binding energy, the Y binding energy, and the K-psi' scattering length. This allows us to understand under which circumstances the substructure of the f_0(980) can be neglected in the description of the Y(46…
We discuss a novel mechanism for J/Psi$ production in nuclear collisions arising due to the high density of gluons. We demonstrate that gluon saturation in the colliding nuclei is a dominant source of J/Psi suppression and can explain its experimentally observed rapidity and centrality dependence.
We present new results based on an improved version of the Glauber model, used to describe the nuclear absorption of J/psi in reactions between nuclei at high energy. The excitation of the colour degrees of freedom of nucleons, due to collisions mediated by one-gluon exchange, is taken into account. It is found that the proposed mechanism leads to larger nuclear absorption of J/psi than previously considered.
Three different ways for description of binding energy of superheavy nuclei are discussed. First, one can consider superheavy nuclei as a part of a whole system of nuclei for which a global mass formula is found. Another way is the detailed local description of energy of superheavy nuclei taking into account the effects of shells and subshells. The third way of description, applied for nuclei in the region limited by principal magic numbers, is attached to the beta-stability line.
The connection of the binding energy and width of possible bound eta-mesic states is given to the complex scattering length for s-states in the hope that, with knowledge of the final state interaction this could be useful in searches of these states. In spite of the strong direct potential dependence of both observables this connection is seen to be very model independent even for various nuclei once the influence of also the effective range is considered. The importance of this term is pointed also for data analyses. Although the nucleus considered here is 12C, extension to other nuclei is im…
The possibility of etamesic nuclei remains an open problem in nuclear physics until now. Various calculations give contradictory predictions even for the lightest real nucleus $^3$He. In this paper we present the connection of the binding energy and width to the complex scattering length for heavier nuclei than this in the hope that, with knowledge of the final state interaction this could be useful in searches of possible bound states.
We calculate the coherent charmonium photoproduction at intermediate energies accounting for the physics of the charmonium bound states and the dependence of the cross section on the region occupied by color using a correspondingly adjusted generalized vector dominance model (GVDM). In the photon energy domain where the coherence lengths are comparable to the average internucleon distances in nuclei and the nuclear radii we found that significant oscillations of the total and forward photoproduction cross sections governed by the longitudinal nuclear form factor are strongly modified by the ch…
The n,p-networks model is used to estimate binding energies and radii of proton-rich (N < Z) nuclei. These calculations have been made for some representative examples of even-Z and odd-Z nuclei with nucleon numbers lower than sixty. Good agreement is found in the comparison of these results with experimental data.
We have studied strength in the BCS pairing force, used as a residual interaction to the relativistic mean-field to reproduce the height of the inner fission barriers for actinide nuclei. It was found that increasing the pairing strength by about 13% makes reproduce the inner fission barriers better over a wide range of actinide nuclei. This result was verified by using the moment-of-inertia of pairing rotational energy, which was introduced to avoid mean-field and odd-mass effects in the pairing interaction to deduce purely the pairing strength. The pairing interaction thus determined could s…
A nuclear model is extended to estimate binding energies and radii of neutron-rich nuclei. These calculations have been made for some representative examples of even-Z and odd-Z nuclei with nucleon numbers lower than sixty. A comparison of results with experimental data supports the value and development of the model in nuclear studies.
A variational Monte Carlo method is used to generate sets of orthogonal trial functions, Psi_T(J^pi,T), for given quantum numbers in various light p-shell nuclei. These Psi_T are then used as input to Green's function Monte Carlo calculations of first, second, and higher excited (J^pi,T) states. Realistic two- and three-nucleon interactions are used. We find that if the physical excited state is reasonably narrow, the GFMC energy converges to a stable result. With the combined Argonne v_18 two-nucleon and Illinois-2 three-nucleon interactions, the results for many second and higher states in A…
Two approximate formulae are given for the binding energies in Lambda-hypernuclei and light nuclei by means of the (reduced) Poeschl-Teller and the Gaussian central potentials. Those easily programmable formulae combine the eigenvalues of the transformed Jacobi eigenequation and an application of the hypervirial theorems.
Continuum-coupling correction to binding energies in neutron rich oxygen and fluorine isotopes and to excitation energies of 2+ states in 36Ca and 36S mirror nuclei are studied using the real-energy continuum shell model.
The statistical fluctuations of the ground-state energy and of the binding energy of nuclei are investigated using both perturbation theory and supersymmetry. The fluctuations are induced by the experimentally observed stochastic behavior of levels in the vicinity of neutron threshold. The results are compared with a recent analysis of binding-energy fluctuations by Bohigas and Leboeuf, and with theoretical work by Feshbach et al.
What is the origin of nuclear clustering and how does it emerge from the nuclear interaction? While there is ample experimental evidence for this phenomenon, its theoretical characterization directly from nucleons as degrees of freedom remains a challenge, making it difficult to improve nuclear forces using clustering observables. In this work, a simple ratio of energies based on effective scale arguments is proposed to assess the quality of nuclear forces on alpha clustering (${ {}^{4}\text{He} }$) in bound and narrow ground-state nuclei. The proposed clustering ratio is parameter-free and co…
In this letter I present further data that show the remarkable evidence for the existence of an alpha-cluster stucture in the ground states of even-even N=Z nuclei. Such a remarkable systematic was observed 20 years ago for these nuclei at A<= 72 and is extended here up to A=100.
Binding energies and other global properties of nuclei in the middle of the $pf$ shell, such as M1, E2 and Gamow-Teller sum rules, have been obtained using a new Shell Model code (NATHAN) written in quasi-spin formalism and using a $j-j$-coupled basis. An extensive comparison is made with the recently available Shell Model Monte Carlo results using the effective interaction KB3. The binding energies for -nearly- all the $1f_{7/2}$ nuclei are compared with the measured (and extrapolated) results.
Isospin singlet (pn) pairing as well as quartetting in nuclei is expected to arise near the symmetry line $N=Z$. Empirical values can be deduced from the nuclear binding energies applying special filters. Within the local density approximation, theoretical estimates for finite nuclei are obtained from results for the condensation energy of asymmetric nuclear matter. It is shown that the isospin singlet condensation energy drops down abruptly for |N-Z|~4 for medium nuclei in the region A=40. Furthermore, alpha-like quartetting and the influence of excitations are discussed.
We study the binding energies of spin-isospin saturated nuclei with nucleon number $8 \le A \le 100$ in semiclassical Monte Carlo many-body simulations. The model Hamiltonian consists of, (i) nucleon kinetic energy, (ii) a nucleon-nucleon interaction potential, and (iii) an effective Pauli potential which depends on density. The basic ingredients of the nucleon-nucleon potential are, a short-range repulsion, and a medium-range attraction. Our results demonstrate that one can always expect to obtain the empirical binding energies for a set of nuclei by introducing a proper density dependent Pau…
The apparent splitting between orbitals that are spin-orbit partners can be substantially influenced by the effects of finite binding. In particular, such effects can account for the observed decrease in separation of the neutron $1p_{3/2}$ and $1p_{1/2}$ orbitals between the $^{41}$Ca and $^{35}$Si isotopes. This behavior has been the subject of recent experimental and theoretical works and cited as evidence for a proton "bubble" in $^{34}$Si causing an explicit weakening of the spin-orbit interaction. The results reported here suggest that the change in the separation between the $1p_{3/2}$ …
Binding energy differences of mirror nuclei for A=15, 17, 27, 29, 31, 33, 39 and 41 are calculated in the framework of relativistic deformed mean-field theory. The spatial components of the vector meson fields and the photon are fully taken into account in a self-consistent manner. The calculated binding energy differences are systematically smaller than the experimental values and lend support to the existency of the Okamoto--Nolen-Schiffer anomaly found decades ago in nonrelativistic calculations. For the majority of the nuclei studied, however, the results are such that the anomaly is signi…
Recently an alpha-cluster model based on the pn-pair interactions with using the isospin invariance of nuclear force has been proposed. According to the model the excess neutron pairs fill out the free space in the core determined by the difference in the charge and matter radii of the alpha-clusters. Then the number of excess neutrons in beta-stable nuclei depends on the number of the core alpha-clusters. In such a representation the specific density of binding energy of core is the only parameter to fit the experimental binding energies of beta-stable nuclei and it turned out to be a constan…
We present results of the Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov calculations performed using nuclear energy density functionals based on regularized functional generators at next-to-leading and next-to-next-to-leading order. We discuss properties of binding energies and pairing gaps determined in semi-magic spherical nuclei. The results are compared with benchmark calculations performed for the functional generator SLyMR0 and functional UNEDF0.
A simultaneous description of non-strange nuclei and hypernuclei is provided by a single mass formula inspired by the spin-flavour SU(6) symmetry breaking. This formula is used to estimate the hyperon binding energies of Lambda, double Lambda, Sigma, Cascade and Theta hypernuclei. The results are found to be in good agreement with the available experimental data on 'bound' nuclei and relativistic as well as quark mean field calculations. This mass formula is useful to estimate binding energies over a wide range of masses including the light mass nuclei. It is not applicable for repulsive poten…
It is shown that the use of a density dependent effective Pauli potential together with a nucleon-nucleon interaction potential plays a crucial role to reproduce not only the binding energies but also the matter root mean square radii of medium mass range spin-isospin saturated nuclei. This study is performed with a semiclassical Monte Carlo many-body simulation within the context of a simplified nucleon-nucleon interaction to focus on the effect of the genuine correlations due to the fermionic nature of nucleons. The procedure obtained is rather robust and it does not depend on the detailed f…
Nuclear mass contains a wealth of nuclear structure information, and has been widely employed to extract the nuclear effective interactions. The known nuclear mass is usually extracted from the experimental atomic mass by subtracting the masses of electrons and adding the binding energy of electrons in the atom. However, the binding energies of electrons are sometimes neglected in extracting the known nuclear masses. The influence of binding energies of electrons on nuclear mass predictions are carefully investigated in this work. If the binding energies of electrons are directly subtracted fr…
We analyse the contribution of isovector and isoscalar proton-neutron pairing to the binding energies of even-even nuclei with $N-Z=0,2,4$ and atomic mass $20 < A <100$. The binding energies are calculated in the mean-field approach by coupling a Skyrme-type functional to an isovector-isoscalar pairing force of zero range. The latter is treated in the framework of quartet condensation model (QCM), which conserves exactly the particle number and the isospin. The interdependence of pairing and deformation is taken into account by performing self-consistent Skyrme-HF+QCM calculations in the intri…
In this paper we present a systematic analysis on the average interaction between the last protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei, which can be extracted from the double differences of nuclear binding energies. The empirical average proton-neutron interaction $V_{pn}$ thus derived from experimental data can be described in a very simple form as the interplay of the nuclear mean field and the pairing interaction. It is found that the smooth behavior as well as the local fluctuations of the $V_{pn}$ in even-even nuclei with $N\neq Z$ are dominated by the contribution from the proton-neutron monop…
The energies of the (eta_c d) and (eta_c 3He) bound states are calculated on the basis of exact three- and four-body AGS equations. For the eta_c N interaction a Yukawa-type potential has been adopted. The calculations are done for a certain range of its strength parameter. The results obtained are quite different from calculations based on the folding model.
New formulas to calculate the nuclear charge radii and the nuclear binding energies have been derived in the framework of an alpha-cluster model. The particular features of the model are two assumptions that the proton-neutron pair interactions are responsible for adherence between alpha-clusters and that the proton and the neutron from a proton-neutron pair have equal nuclear potentials. These assumptions allow one to determine the charge and Coulomb radii in dependence on the amount of proton-neutron pairs in the nucleus. Unlike the Weizsacker's formula to calculate nuclear binding energies,…
Neutron rich nuclei has been studied with a new phenomenological mass formula. Predictions of different mass formulas for the location of the neutron dripline are compared with those from the present calculation. The implications of the new mass formula for r-process nucleosynthesis are discussed. It is found that though the neutron drip line obtained from this formula differs substantially from other formulas, the r-process abundance upto mass 200 are unlikely to be significantly different. The errors inherent in the mass formula are found to play an insignificant role beyond mass A = 80.
The electromagnetic effects of the finite size of the nucleon are implemented self-consistently on top of the Skyrme Hartree-Fock calculation, where the electric form factors of both protons and neutrons are considered. Furthermore, the vacuum polarization and the electromagnetic spin-orbit interaction are taken into account. The self-consistent finite-size effects give a different Coulomb potential from the conventional one and affect the neutrons as well. The contribution of the finite-size effects to the total energy reaches $ 7 \, \mathrm{MeV} $ in $ {}^{208} \mathrm{Pb} $. The vacuum pola…
With the goal of developing predictive ab-initio capability for light and medium-mass nuclei, two-nucleon and three-nucleon forces from chiral effective field theory are optimized simultaneously to low-energy nucleon-nucleon scattering data, as well as binding energies and radii of few-nucleon systems and selected isotopes of carbon and oxygen. Coupled-cluster calculations based on this interaction, named NNLO$_{\rm sat}$, yield accurate binding energies and radii of nuclei up to $^{40}$Ca, and are consistent with the empirical saturation point of symmetric nuclear matter. In addition, the low…
The alpha-cluster model is based on two assumptions that the proton-neutron pair interactions are responsible for adherence between alpha-clusters and that the NN-interaction in the alpha-clusters is isospin independent. It allows one to estimate the Coulomb energy and the short range inter-cluster bond energy in dependence on the number of clusters. The charge radii are calculated on the number of alpha-clusters too. Unlike the Weizsacker formula in this model the binding energies of alpha-clusters and excess neutrons are estimated separately. The calculated values are in a good agreement wit…
We examine the production of J/$Ψ$ mesons in high energy hadron-nucleus collisions using models that account for both the initial state modification of parton distributions in nuclei and the final state interaction of the produced $c\bar c$ pairs. We show that, at the energies of current fixed target experiments, J/$Ψ$ production through quark-antiquark annihilation gives the largest contribution at $x_F > 0.5$, while gluon-gluon fusion dominates the production at smaller $x_F$. The observed J/$Ψ$ suppression at large $x_F$ is directly connected to nuclear shadowing in deeply inelastic scatter…
The nuclear interaction is responsible for keeping neutrons and protons joined in an atomic nucleus. Phenomenological nuclear potentials, fitted to experimental data, allow one to know about the nuclear behaviour with more or less success where quantum mechanics is hard to be used. A nuclear potential is suggested and an expression for the potential energy of two nuclear entities, either nuclei or nucleons, is developed. In order to estimate parameters in this expression, some nucleon additions to nuclei are considered and a model is suggested as a guide of the addition process. Coulomb barrie…
We analyse the impact of the statistical uncertainties of the the nucleon-nucleon interaction, based on the Granada-2013 np-pp database, on the binding energies of the triton and the alpha particle using a bootstrap method, by solving the Faddeev equations for $^3$H and the Yakubovsky equations for $^4$He respectively. We check that in practice about 30 samples prove enough for a reliable error estimate. An extrapolation of the well fulfilled Tjon-line correlation predicts the experimental binding of the alpha particle within uncertainties.
The binding energy (BE) or mass is one of the most fundamental properties of an atomic nucleus. Precise binding energies are vital inputs for many nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics studies. However, due to the complexity of atomic nuclei and of the non-perturbative strong interaction, up to now, no conventional physical model can describe nuclear binding energies with a precision below 0.1 MeV, the accuracy needed by nuclear astrophysical studies. In this work, artificial neural networks (ANNs), the so called ``universal approximators", are used to calculate nuclear binding energies. We…
We discuss the possibility of producing a new kind of nuclear system by putting a few antibaryons inside ordinary nuclei. The structure of such systems is calculated within the relativistic mean--field model assuming that the nucleon and antinucleon potentials are related by the G-parity transformation. The presence of antinucleons leads to decreasing vector potential and increasing scalar potential for the nucleons. As a result, a strongly bound system of high density is formed. Due to the significant reduction of the available phase space the annihilation probability might be strongly suppre…
The model of binding alpha-particles in nuclei is suggested. It is shown good (with the accuracy of 1-2%) description of the experimental binding energies in light and medium nuclear systems. Our preliminary calculations show enhancement of the binding energy for super heavy nuclei with Z~120.
The binding energies of deformed even-even nuclei have been analysed within the framework of a recently proposed microscopic-macroscopic model. We have used the semiclassical Wigner - Kirkwood $\hbar$ expansion up to fourth - order, instead of the usual Strutinsky averaging scheme, to compute the shells corrections in a deformed Woods - Saxon potential including the spin-orbit contribution. For a large set of 561 even-even nuclei with $Z\ge 8$ and $N\ge 8$, we find an {\it rms} deviation from the experiment of 610 keV in binding energies, comparable to the one found for the same set of nuclei …
Using the color-singlet free energy F_1 and total internal energy U_1 obtained by Kaczmarek et al. for a static quark Q and an antiquark Qbar in quenched QCD, we study the binding energies and wave functions of heavy quarkonia in a quark-gluon plasma. By minimizing the grand potential in a simplified schematic model, we find that the proper color-singlet Q-Qbar potential can be obtained from the total internal energy U_1 by subtracting the gluon internal energy contributions. We carry out this subtraction in the local energy-density approximation in which the gluon energy density can be relate…
Using the surface tension energy put in dependence on the number of alpha-clusters in the core in a phenomenological model representing a nucleus as a core and a nuclear molecule on its surface leads to widening the number of isotopes to be described from the narrow strip of beta-stability to the isotopes with N >= Z. The number of alpha-clusters in the molecule is obtained from the analysis of experimental binding energies and the specific density of the core binding energy ρand the radii are calculated. It is shown that for the isotopes of one Z with growing A the number of alpha-clusters of…
The binding energy differences of the valence proton and neutron of the mirror nuclei, $^{15}$O -- $^{15}$N, $^{17}$F -- $^{17}$O, $^{39}$Ca -- $^{39}$K and $^{41}$Sc -- $^{41}$Ca, are calculated using the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model. The calculation involves nuclear structure and shell effects explicitly. It is shown that binding energy differences of a few hundred keV arise from the strong interaction, even after subtracting all electromagnetic corrections. The origin of these differences may be ascribed to the charge symmetry breaking effects set in the strong interaction through the u…
We extend the ab initio coupled-cluster effective interaction (CCEI) method to deformed open-shell nuclei with protons and neutrons in the valence space, and compute binding energies and excited states of isotopes of neon and magnesium. We employ a nucleon-nucleon and three-nucleon interaction from chiral effective field theory evolved to a lower cutoff via a similarity renormalization group transformation. We find good agreement with experiment for binding energies and spectra, while charge radii of neon isotopes are underestimated. For the deformed nuclei $^{20}$Ne and $^{24}$Mg we reproduce…
We present a simple activity based on the liquid-drop model which allows secondary school students to explore the uses of mathematical models and gain an intuitive understanding of the concept of binding energy, and in particular the significance of positive binding energy. Using spreadsheets provided as Supplementary Material, students can perform simple manipulations on the different coefficients of the model to understand the role of each of its five terms. Students can use the spreadsheets to determine model parameters by optimising the agreement with real atomic mass data. %This will subs…
On the basis of the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock method with the nucleon-nucleon forces obtained from lattice QCD simulations, the properties of the medium-heavy doubly-magic nuclei such as 16^O and 40^Ca are investigated. We found that those nuclei are bound for the pseudo-scalar meson mass M_PS ~ 470 MeV. The mass number dependence of the binding energies, single-particle spectra and density distributions are qualitatively consistent with those expected from empirical data at the physical point, although these hypothetical nuclei at heavy quark mass have smaller binding energies than the real nucl…
We demonstrate that the binding energies and widths of eta-mesic nuclei depend strongly on subthreshold eta-N interaction. This strong dependence is made evident from comparing three different eta-nucleus optical potentials: (1) a microscopic optical potential taking into account the full effects of off-shell eta-nucleon interactions; (2) a factorization approximation to the microscopic optical potential where a downward energy shift parameter is introduced to approximate the subthreshold eta-nucleon interaction; and (3) an optical potential using on-shell eta-nucleon scattering length as the …
Recent data for the slope of the EMC-ratio in the intermediate $x$-region for {\em light} nuclei, with $3 \leq A \leq 12$, have the potential to shed new light on the origin of the EMC effect. Here we study the role of nuclear binding using the scaling variable ${\tilde y}$, best suited to take into account this effect, and the understanding of the average nucleon removal energies, $\bar{E}$, provided by state-of-the-art calculations based on nuclear many body theory. We find an excellent correlation between the new EMC data at $x \sim 0.5$ and $\bar{E}$ for nuclei with $A$ from 3 to $\infty$,…
