Nuclear Field Theory: Exact Theory or Science Fiction?

Abstract

To understand the boson behavior of a fermion system is of fundamental importance in many fields of physics^l. In nuclear physics, this problem too has attracted enormous interest because of the successes of the Interacting Boson Model (IBM)². One possible way to carry out such studies is the nuclear field theory (NFT)³ which was first proposed in 1968 by Mottelson in his attempt to treat the coupling between the so-called elementary excitation modes in nuclei; it may be convenient for this purpose because the bosonic degrees of freedom is contained inherently. Obviously, the nuclear system is a fermion system. Therefore, any theory which professes to describe the system must be equivalent to the fully fermionic theory. From this point of view, it is unfortunate that a solid foundation for the NFT has not been provided for thus resulting either in a limited acceptability of the theory or merely regarded by many as just a model.

Work supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant # Phy-7908402. and # Phy-8018613.