Collective Treatment of the Giant Resonances in Spherical Nuclei

Abstract

In a collective treatment the energies of the giant resonances are given by the boundary conditions at the nuclear surface, which is subject to vibration in spherical nuclei. The general form of the coupling between these two collective motions is given by angular-momentum and parity conservation. The coupling constants are completely determined within the hydrodynamical model. In the present treatment the influence of the surface vibrations on the total photon-absorption cross section is calculated. It turns out that in most of the spherical nuclei this interaction leads to a pronounced structure in the cross section. The agreement with the experiments in medium-heavy nuclei is striking; many of the experimental characteristics are reproduced by the present calculations. In some nuclei, however, there seem to be indications of single-particle excitations which are not yet contained in this work.