Dynamical response functions in correlated fermionic systems (Q2484196)

This paper studies the correlation effects on the response functions in nuclear matter at finite temperature beyond the usual scheme based on Hartree-Fock approximation plus random phase approximation (RPA). A mean-field interaction plus a residual interaction are considered. The latter generates contributions to the self-energy of nucleons due to an admixture (in the lowest order) of two-hole one-particle and two-particle one-hole configurations to the single-particle propagator. The contributions due to the propagator for the dressed nucleons and the corresponding vertex corrections are treated in a consistent way following the recipe of Baym and Kadanoff. For that purpose, a semi-realistic Hamiltonian is proposed with parameters adjusted to reproduce the nucleon self-energy as derived from realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions. It has been noted [\textit{H. Müther} and \textit{A. Polls}, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 45, 243 (2000)] that if such realistic interactions are used in the Hartree-Fock approach, they yield unbound nuclei. Thus, the correlations -- induced by strong short-range and tensor components of the interactions -- must be incorporated. The authors show that for a scalar residual interaction, both contributions -- dressed propagator and vertex corrections-- compensate each other to a large extent and the resulting response functions are very close to those of the RPA, but the collective modes, if present, get an additional width due to the coupling to multipair configurations. Furthermore, they show that for isospin-dependent residual interactions, the above mentioned contributions do not compensate each other, in some specific spin-isospin channels, and strong modifications of isospin response functions arise, leading to long tails at large energies. Such modifications can lead to the disappearance of collective spin or isospin modes in a correlated system. Numerical results for symmetric nuclear matter and pure neutron matter are presented, based on a simple isospin-dependent form for the residual interaction. These results may have an effect, for instance, on the absorption rate of neutrinos in nuclear matter, because of the high sensitivity of their opacity to the details of the response function, a process important, for instance, in supernovae explosions and cooling of neutron stars.