Nuclear Density Functional Theory

This book summarizes the enormous amount of material accumulated in the field of nuclear density functional theory over the last few decades. The goal of the theory is to provide a complete quantum-mechanical description and explanation of nuclear phenomena in terms of the local density distribution as a basic ingredient rather than the many-particle wavefunction. This leads to a considerable reduction in the mathematical complexity of nuclear many-body problems and to a great conceptual simplicity and visual clarity in its theoretical treatment. The authors develop the mathematical framework on which the theory is based and consider the associated approaches used to analyse experimental data in a variety of nuclei and nuclear processes with widely differing properties.

Nuclear many-body problem; Foundation of density functional theory; Nuclear Thomas-Fermi-Weizsacker functionals; Semiclassical nuclear density functional theory; Averaging nuclear energy density functionals; The Kohn-Sham theory of nuclei; Rigorous energy density functional approach; Time-dependent processes in nuclei; The sum rule approach and nuclear density functional theory; Nuclear systems at finite temperature; References; Author index; Subject index.