The Shell Model

The Shell Model

●
Shells in atoms and in nuclei
●
The mean-field potential
●
Phenomenological (empirical) shell model
●
The spin-orbit splitting
●
Total angular momentum
●
Modified spectroscopic notation
The shells in Atom
 Hydrogen Atom
●
A hydrogen atom is a two-body system consisting of an
electron and proton.
●
A motion of such system can be described fully and
accurately by a translational motion of the centre of mass of
the system and orbital motion around the centre of mass.
●
Since proton is ∼1836 times heavier then electron the centre 1836 times heavier then electron the centre
of mass coincides with good accuracy with the centre of the
proton.
●
Nucleus is a point-like source of long-range
electromagnetic force.
●
Electromagnetic interactions are well understood, in
particular, the Schrödinger equation for Coulomb
potential has been solved analytically.
 Nucleus
Similar to atomic shell structure nucleus
shell structure was proposed
– V(r) is still a central potential,
but is generated by all of
the nucleons
– It is NOT an external force

This means that all nucleons are able to interact with all
other nucleons due to the short distances. This causes
problems when we investigate the potential...
 The Schrödinger Equation for Nucleons
Although they differ greatly from the atom, in general, we do
know how to express these interactions for the nucleus:
 Difficulties
●
A nucleus is a many-body system of interacting particles.
●
There are no analytic solutions of the Schrödinger equations
for such system, also often only approximate solutions can be
obtained.
●
In a nucleus there is no dominant centre of the long-range
force.
●
Rather than that, the force is short range and there are many
pairs of interacting nucleons.
●
The nuclear force is still poorly understood.
●
Recent results indicate that nucleon-nucleon interactions are
modified in the presence of a third nucleon (the three-body
force)
●
There are two types of particles (protons and neutrons).
 Why Shell model works?
●
Interaction between nucleons in nuclei averages out and
results in a potential which depends on position but does
not depend on time.
●
This potential is often referred to as the “nuclear mean
field”. A nucleus, therefore, is an example of a self-
organizing system in which the nuclear potential emerges
from a large number of nucleon-nucleon interactions.
●
There are some similarities between self-organization of
nucleons in nuclei and electrons in multi-electron atoms, with
one significant difference though, namely, that in multi-
electron atoms the electromagnetic potential between the
nucleus and an electron dominates the potential between
electron-electron interactions. There is no equivalent
dominating potential in a nucleus.
 Two body interactions
●
Note that the nucleon-nucleon interaction has a two-body
character (there are two nucleons involved).
●
If we would like to describe this fact in terms of the
potential energy of these interaction we would need to use
Vi,j with i representing one of the nucleons and j
representing the other one.
●
The total energy would be

with the second sum running over i > j to avoid double-

counting of the interaction energies
 The mean field potential
●
The mean field potential attempts to replace the two-body
interaction of Eq. 1 with a potential Vi which depends only
on the position of a single nucleon. If this is successful
many things become simple:

where Ei , Ti and Vi are single-particle total, kinetic and

potential energies, respectively.
●
This is especially convenient for solving the Schrödinger
equation since in case of Eq. 2, it separates into a set of
independent Schrödinger equations for each nucleon, while
in case of Eq. 1 all these equations are coupled.
 Residual Interactions
●
After simplification one can show:

● Esm represents energy Shell Model energy (Eq.2) and Eres is given as

is the energy of the residual interactions “left out” by Shell model

●
Shell Model works well for smaller residual interctions.
 Particles in Potentials
●
After justifying that nucleons act in a mean-field potential, one can try
various potentials known from Modern Physics.
●
Our exercises on the board for Potential Well and a 3D spherical
harmonic oscillator gives us the following “shell gaps”:
 Experimental evidence for closed nuclear shells
Evidence
Deviations from Bethe-Weizsäcker mass formula:

Neutron
Proton
B/A (MeV per nucleon)

28
28 50
50
82 very stable:

4
2 He2
16
8 O8
126 40
20 Ca20
82 48
Ca28
20
208
82 Pb126

mass number A
 Shell structure from masses
Evidence
●
Deviations from Weizsäcker mass formula:
 Energy required to remove two neutrons from nuclei
(2-neutron binding energies = 2-neutron “separation” energies)
Evidence

25
N = 82
23

21
N = 126
19

17
S(2n) MeV

15

13

Sm
11
Hf
9
Ba
Pb
7 N = 84
Sn
5
52 56 60 64 68 72 76 80 84 88 92 96 100 104 108 112 116 120 124 128 132

Neutron Number
 Shell structure from masses
Evidence
Neutron-separation energy:
Experimental evidence for closed nuclear shells
The three faces of the shell model
 Phenomenology of shell model
●
While previous figure explain why the shell model works for nuclei, the
historical development of the shell model follow a different path.
●
The nuclear shell model was proposed to explain a collection of
experimental data which indicated existence of nuclear shells in
analogy to the atomic shell model.
●
When proposing this model the scientists recognized the difference in
the radial equation between the atomic and the nuclear shell model.
●
In particular the saturation property of the nuclear force (known
from the liquid drop model) called for a potential flat in the centre.
Scattering and reaction experiments called for diffused surface.
●
Early approximation of the nuclear potential were in form of a potential
well, modified harmonic oscillator (flat bottom) or later the Wood-Saxon
potential (proportional to Fermi density distribution).
The confusion
 The Woods-Saxon Potential
●
This potential is more realistic
than our 3D harmonic
oscillator (H.O.)
●
So, if we numerically solve the
single-particle Schrödinger
equation using this potential we
should expect to break some of
the degeneracies for the different
values from the H.O.
●
With the broken degeneracy,
perhaps we can reproduce the
observed shell gaps at
2,8,20,28,50,82,126,...?
 The spin-orbit term
●
The spin-orbit term in nuclei reduces the energy of states with
spin oriented parallel to the orbital angular momentum while
increasing the energy of states with spin oriented opposite to
the orbital angular momentum.
●
This is different to the result of spin-orbit interaction in atoms
where states with spin oriented opposite to the orbital angular
momentum are lower in energy.
●
The spin-orbit interaction in atoms is understood from the
electromagnetic interaction of the magnetic moment of an
electron with the magnetic field resulting from orbiting a
charged nucleus.
●
The spin-orbit interaction in nuclei results from the spin-orbit
part of the nuclear force.
The spin-orbit term
 The spin-orbit term
●
The nuclear potential with the spin-orbit term is

●
The radial part V(r) is still the flat bottom well with diffuse surface
(the Wood-Saxon potential), while the VLS is often taken as negative
derivative of V(r) with respect to r

●
For a flat bottom well with diffuse surface the derivative is peaked at
the surface.
●
The spin-orbit term makes the nuclear potential well wider for
nucleons with spin parallel to the orbital angular momentum and less
wide for nucleons with spin opposite to the orbital angular
momentum.
●
Wider well results in states of lower energies.
The spin-orbit term
The spin-orbit term
1
⃗j= ⃗ℓ + ⃗s ⇒ < ℓ⋅s >= ⋅[ ⟨ j 2 ⟩ −⟨ ℓ 2 ⟩−⟨ s 2 ⟩ ]⋅ℏ 2
2
1
= ⋅[ j⋅( j +1 )−ℓ⋅( ℓ +1 ) −s⋅( s+ 1 ) ]⋅ℏ2
2
The nuclear potential with the spin-orbit term is
ℓ
V ( r ) + ⋅V ℓs for j=ℓ +1/2
2
ℓ+1
V ( r )− ⋅V ℓs for j=ℓ−1/2
2
spin-orbit interaction leads to a large splitting for large ℓ.

− ( ℓ+1 ) / 2⋅⟨V ℓs ⟩
j = ℓ − 1/2

j = ℓ ± 1/2 ℓ / 2⋅⟨V ℓs ⟩
j = ℓ + 1/2
 The spin-orbit term
➔
reduces the energy of states with spin
oriented parallel to the orbital angular
ℓ−1/2
momentum j = ℓ+1/2 (Intruder states)
2⋅ℓ +1 2
➔
reproduces the magic numbers
ΔEE ℓs = ⋅ℏ ⋅⟨ V ℓs ⟩
2 large energy gaps → very stable nuclei
ℓ +1/2

Important consequences: a) Reduced orbitals from higher lying N+1 shell have different parities than
orbitals from the N shell.
b) Strong interaction preserves their parity. The reduced orbitals with different parity are rather pure
states and do not mix within the shell.
The modified spectroscopic notation
The parity of single-particle orbitals
 Success of the extreme single-particle model
 magnetic moments:
The g-factor gj is given by: ⃗j ⃗j
⃗
[
⃗μ j =g ℓ⋅ℓ + g s⋅⃗s =g j⋅ j ⇒ ⃗μ j = ( g ℓ⋅⃗ℓ +g s⋅⃗s )⋅ ⋅
⃗
|j| |j| ]
⃗ℓ 2 =( ⃗j−⃗s )2 = ⃗j 2 −2⋅⃗j⋅⃗s +⃗s 2 2
with ⃗s 2 =( ⃗j− ⃗ℓ ) = ⃗j 2 −2⋅⃗j⋅⃗ℓ + ⃗ℓ 2

g ℓ⋅{ j ( j+1 ) + ℓ ( ℓ+1 ) −3 / 4 } +g s⋅{ j ( j+1 ) −ℓ ( ℓ +1 ) +3 / 4 }

μ j=
⃗ ⋅⃗j
2⋅j ( j+1 )

1 1 ℓ⋅( ℓ +1 ) −s⋅( s+1 )

g j = ⋅( g ℓ + g s ) + ⋅ ⋅( g ℓ −g s )
2 2 j⋅( j +1 )

Simple relation for the g-factor

of single-particle states
μ ( g s −g ℓ )
= g Kern =g ℓ ± for j=ℓ±1/ 2
μ 2⋅ℓ +1
K
 1 1
[ ( ) ]
{ }
 magnetic moments: g ℓ⋅ j− + ⋅g ⋅μ K für j=ℓ+1/ 2
2 2 s
⟨ μ z ⟩=
j 3 1
j+1[ ( ) ]
⋅ g ℓ⋅ j + − ⋅g s ⋅μ K für
2 2
j=ℓ−1/2

 g-faktor of nucleons:
proton: gℓ = 1; gs = +5.585
neutron: gℓ = 0; gs = -3.82

( j+2 . 293 )⋅μ K für j=ℓ+1 /2

proton: ⟨ μ z ⟩=
{
( j−2 . 293 )⋅
j
j+1 K
⋅μ für j=ℓ−1/2 }
−1 . 91⋅μ K für j=ℓ +1/2
neutron: ⟨ μ z ⟩=
{
+1. 91⋅
j
j+1 K
⋅μ für j=ℓ−1/ 2 }
Extreme single-particle shell model
 The shell model: Application
Nuclei near 16O

●
Let us apply the extreme single-particle shell model to predict spin,
parities and excitation energies near the doubly-magic 16O.

● The orbitals above the N = Z = 8 shell gaps are positive-parity d5/2 and
s1/2 states. Therefore, we expect for 17O and 17F the ground state of
positive parity and spin of 5/2 and the first excited state of positive
parity and spin of 1/2.

● The orbitals below the N = Z = 8 shell gaps are negative-parity p3/2 and
p1/2 states. Therefore, we expect for 15O and 15N the ground state of
negative parity and spin of 1/2 and the first excited state of negative
parity and spin of 3/2. This the case for the ground state but not for the
first excited state.
The shell model: Application
The shell model: Application
The shell model: Application
The shell model: Application
The shell model: Application
The shell model: Application