Self-consistent quasiparticle formulation of a multiphonon method and its application to the neutron-rich O 20 nucleus

A Bogoliubov quasiparticle formulation of an equation-of-motion phonon method, suited for open-shell nuclei, is derived. Like its particle-hole version, it consists of deriving a set of equations of motions whose iterative solution generates an orthonormal basis of n -phonon states ( n = 0 , 1 , 2 , ... ), built of quasiparticle Tamm-Dancoff phonons, which simplifies the solution of the eigenvalue problem. The method is applied to the open-shell neutron-rich 20 O for illustrative purposes. A Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov canonical basis, derived from an intrinsic two-body optimized chiral Hamiltonian, is used to derive and solve the eigenvalue equations in a space encompassing a truncated two-phonon basis. The spurious admixtures induced by the violation of the particle number and the center-of-mass motion are eliminated to a large extent by a Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization procedure. The calculation takes into account the Pauli principle, is self-consistent, and is parameter free except for the energy cutoff used to truncate the two-phonon basis, which induces an increasing depression of the ground state through its strong coupling to the quasiparticle vacuum. Such a cutoff is fixed so as to reproduce the first 1 − level. The two-phonon states are shown to enhance the level density of the low-energy spectrum, consistently with the data, and to induce a fragmentation of the E 1 strength which, while accounting for the very low E 1 transitions, is not sufficient to reproduce the experimental cross section in the intermediate energy region. This and other discrepancies suggest the need of including the three-phonon states. These are also expected to offset the action of the two phonons on the quasiparticle vacuum and, therefore, free the calculation from any parameter.