Perturbed nuclear matter studied within density functional theory with a finite number of particles

Abstract

Nuclear matter is studied within the density functional theory framework. Our method employs a finite number of nucleons in a box subject to periodic boundary conditions, in order to simulate infinite matter and study its response to an external static potential. We detail both the theoretical formalism and its computational implementation for pure neutron matter and symmetric nuclear matter with Skyrme-like energy density functionals (EDFs). The implementation of spin-orbit, in particular, is carefully discussed. Our method is applied to the problem of the static response of nuclear matter and the impact of the perturbation on the energies, densities, and level structure of the system is investigated. Our work is a crucial step in our program of ab initio based nuclear EDFs [Phys. Rev. C 104, 024315 (2021)] as it paves the way towards the goal of constraining the EDF surface terms on ab initio calculations.