The coupling of valence shell and particle-hole degrees of freedom in a partial random phase approximation

Abstract

It is well known that the random phase approximation breaks down in the absence of a substantial energy gap between occupied and unoccupied single-particle states. Particle-hole excitations are then inevitably accompanied by substantial rearrangements of the particles in the neighbourhood of the Fermi surface. To accommodate this situation, a partial RPA is introduced which corresponds to replacing only the particle-hole degrees of freedom by bosons but leaving the valence space degrees of freedom intact. The PRPA is therefore a mapping of the many-fermion dynamics into the dynamics of a coupled boson-valence space. In application of the PRPA, algebraic methods, of either a fermionic or Lie algebra type, can be introduced, if desired, to facilitate the treatment of the valence space degrees of freedom. Results of applications are presented in which the valence space particles are treated in the rotational and SU(3) models, and are coupled strongly to giant dipole and quadrupole resonances.