# TDHF simulation of the expansion of abraded nuclei.

## 1 Introduction

During the past decade, many works both in experimental and theoretical nuclear physics, have been devoted to the search of the liquid-gas phase transition in Heavy-Ion collisions at intermediate energies. One of the most striking results is the observation of the so-called caloric curve . Indeed, using an isotopic thermometer in conjunction with a measure of the total excitation energy, the authors of ref.  have observed that, over a wide range of excitation energy, the temperature of the abraded source seems constant while for a system in an unique phase, one would expect a monotonic increase of the temperature with excitation energy. This curve is similar to those known for liquid-gas phase transition at constant pressure. Indeed, in a coexistence region of a single fluid system, it exists a univocal relation between all intensive thermodynamical quantities. From the experimental point of view this curve is actually subject of debates since neither the temperature nor the excitation energy are well defined quantities for small objects in rapid evolution such as hot nuclei.

Despite all these difficulties, this observation might be a major step forward since it could be a direct evidence of the liquid-gas phase transition in nuclear matter . Recently, an interpretation of this curve has been proposed by Papp and Nörenberg. Considering the expansion of excited projectile like fragments in a collective model, they predict that the temperatures at maximum dilution follow approximately the experimental caloric curve. Indeed, the temperature remains almost constant while more and more excited systems are considered because the densities at the turning point of the monopole oscillation rapidly decrease as a the initial excitation increase. As stressed in a recent review article, this interpretation is of great importance since, it gives an intuitive connection between the creation of compound nucleus, radial flow, multifragmentation and the final results of Heavy-Ion collisions.

In this paper we would like to re-investigate the same scenario within a microscopic approach: the time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) dynamics. This is not the first attempt in this direction, since TDHF as well as BUU have been used in the past to study expanding nuclear systems. However, in this article, we will concentrate on the possible differences between a full quantum treatment and a macroscopic collective model.

In the next chapter, we will recall the general framework of the work done in ref.. In part $`3`$, we describe features of the microscopic model we have used. Two forces of Skyrme type are used, one leads to a Soft Equation of State (EOS) in the infinite nuclear matter, the other one to a stiff EOS. These EOS are key issues when discussing liquid-gas phase transition and in particular mechanical instabilities occurring inside the coexistence zone, namely spinodale instabilities. In this article, we concentrate on the dynamics of expanding systems as predicted by the time-dependent Hartree-Fock theory. In order to discuss the observed results we have defined an equivalent of the EOS for finite systems. We have pointed out many differences between the energy of finite systems as a function of the dilution and the infinite nuclear matter case, this could be in part understood in terms of surface effect and Coulomb interaction.

We have paid a particular attention in initial conditions, in order to be in same framework as in ref. . The authors of ref.  follows the idea of a dominant monopolar collective mode. This idea was used many times in Heavy-Ion Physics at intermediate energy in order to have quantitative informations on how an excited expanding uniform sphere could break. Our calculation do not make this assumption, since we do not impose the domination of one collective mode on the others. In this more general framework, the expansion dynamics appears more complex than the one described in ref. . In particular, for moderate excitation energies (T $`<`$ 5 MeV) we show that hollow structures can be formed during the TDHF dynamics after several monopolar oscillations. These exotic shapes are not included in breathing mode pictures and could change our physical understanding of Heavy-Ion collisions at intermediate energy. In a recent work, we have shown, that other collective degrees of freedom should be included in order to describe the TDHF expansion. In the following, we will generalize the simple breathing mode picture in order to take into account more collective variables. In particular, we illustrate the inclusion of more accessible density profile by defining a generalized EOS that include hollow density profiles. On the other hand, considering highly excited sources (T $`>`$ 5 MeV) we observe that the quantum dynamics differs from collective models because of the importance of wave propagation and of thermal mixing on the dynamics: barrier transmision, large amplitude motion, lost of collectivity, …

## 2 One model for the interpretation of the caloric curve

Let us first recall the scenario followed by Papp ad Nörenberg in order to understand the ALADIN results concerning the fragmentation of a gold projectile after its interaction with a gold target at 600 MeV/A incident energy. Since the experiment is observing the decay of the projectile-like fragments in peripheral heavy ion reactions, the initial conditions are provided by the abrasion-ablation model : after collision, the projectile of mass $`A`$ has lost $`\mathrm{\Delta }A_i`$ nucleons; the initial excitation $`E_i^{}`$ of the nucleus is assumed to be related to $`\mathrm{\Delta }A_i`$ by

$$E_i^{}=\gamma \mathrm{\Delta }A_i$$
(1)   
In the following simulations, $`\mathrm{\Delta }A_i`$ varies from 8 to 108 nucleons and $`\gamma =13.3MeV`$. Temperatures are adjusted in order to get the excitation energies $`E_i^{}`$ (1) for a spherical nucleus of mass $`A`$\- $`\mathrm{\Delta }A_i`$. The initial density is taken to be lower than the normal density, $`\rho _i=0.8\rho _0`$ because the abrasion-ablation dynamics is assumed to induce a small dilution through the ejection of few nucleons.

Then, authors of ref. follow the expansion of the system as an isentropic self-similar monopole motion: the breathing mode. In this picture, the internal degrees of freedom are assumed to be equilibrated like in the hydrodynamical regime. However, the energy and the entropy slightly evolve in time in order to account for particles evaporation.

Studying the evolution of different such systems with various initial masses, they have shown that, choosing a soft equation of state, the caloric curve may be explained as the temperature of the emitting source at the turning points of the collective expansion associated with various initial masses and excitation energies. They have also found that using a stiff equation of states reduces the amplitude of the considered monopole vibration leading to different conclusions.

The aim of our paper, is to examine these conclusions within microscopic model known to describe collective dynamics as well as single particle behaviors in a quantum framework: the TDHF approach. In particular, we will test the validity of the breathing mode scenario by comparison with the complete TDHF dynamics.

## 3 TDHF simulations

### 3.1 Mean-field approximation

We consider the evolution of hot diluted spherical nuclei in the framework of mean-field theory. The simulation of the desexcitations of excited compressed spherical nuclei is already reported in the literature for nuclei initialized using a Constrained Hartree-Fock method (CHF). We use a scaling assumptions in order to prepare the initial nucleus because this method allows to study a broad range of initial dilutions. In the cases where both methods are tractable, we have controlled that it gives results comparable with those of CHF .

We consider systems saturated in spin and isospin. Nucleons are moving independently in an average spherically-symmetric potential. We use the following parameterization for the effective mean-field potential

$$U\left[\rho \right]=\frac{3}{4}t_0\rho +\frac{(\sigma +2)}{16}t_3\rho ^{\sigma +1}+c^2\rho +V_C.$$
(2)   
where the surface term, $`c^2\rho ,`$ can be related to the usual Skyrme parameters by

$$c=\frac{5t_23t_1}{16}$$
(3)   
For sake of simplicity we have taken forces with effective masses equal to the bare one. In order to reduce the numerical instabilities we have used the standard method which consists in replacing the surface term of potential (2) by a folding product with a finite range function 

$$U\left[\rho \right]=\frac{3}{4}t_0^{}\rho +\frac{(\sigma +2)}{16}t_3\rho ^{\sigma +1}+V_0Y\rho +V_C$$
(4)   
where $`Y`$ is a Yukawa folding function

$$Y(\stackrel{}{r})=\frac{\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{r}{a}\right)}{\frac{r}{a}}$$
(5)   
at the lowest order in the range $`a`$ this expression is equivalent to the usual Skyrme functional provided that

$$t_0^{}=t_0\frac{16}{3}\pi a^3V_0$$
(6)   
and that coefficients in the Yukawa folding functions are related by

$$V_0=\frac{(5t_23t_1)}{64\pi a^5}=\frac{c}{4\pi a^5}$$
(7)   
Finally, the direct Coulomb potential $`V_C`$ is introduced in an approximative way by giving an effective charge of $`+\frac{Z}{A}`$ to each nucleon. Using this potential and a spherically symmetric density, each single-particle wave function can be separated into its radial, angular and spin-isospin part

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_\alpha (\stackrel{}{r},\sigma ,\tau )=\frac{R_{nl}(r)}{r}Y_{lm}(\theta ,\phi )\chi _s(\sigma )\chi _t(\tau )$$
(8)   
where $`\alpha `$ represents all quantum number $`\alpha =(n,l,m,s,t)`$ , in which $`n`$ is the energy principal number, $`(l,m)`$ are the usual angular-momentum quantum numbers and $`(s,t)`$ is the quantization of spin and isospin. If we consider initially a hot system, at temperature $`T`$, occupation numbers of various orbitals $`\alpha `$ are given by a Fermi-Dirac distribution

$$n_{nl}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\epsilon _{nl}\mu }{T}\right)+1}$$
(9)   
where the chemical potential is computed in order to get the correct number of particles. To be able to define particle orbitals at high temperature, a small external field $`\lambda r^2`$ has been added to the potential ($`\lambda =0.25`$ MeV/fm<sup>2</sup>). Finally, the density of our spherical nucleus takes the particular form

$$\rho (r,t)=4\underset{n,l}{}(2l+1)n_{nl}\frac{\left|R_{nl}(r,t)\right|^2}{4\pi r^2},$$
(10)   
Before getting into details of the simulations, we will give some more details about these forces and about the associated Equation Of State (EOS).

### 3.2 Forces and infinite nuclear matter properties

Following , we consider two parametrizations of the potential (4) equivalent to the $`SIII`$ and the $`SkM^{}`$ forces (). These two forces correspond respectively to a HARD and a SOFT EOS.

Starting with the mean-field potential (2), the total energy per nucleon in the infinite, uniform, spin and isospin saturated nuclear matter is

$$\frac{E}{A}=\frac{E_k}{A}+\frac{3}{8}t_0\rho _0+\frac{1}{16}t_3\rho _0^{(\sigma +1)}$$
(11)   
where we have introduced the kinetic energy per nucleons $`\frac{E_k}{A}`$; for a cold gas of fermions this energy can be easily related to the density by

$$\frac{E_k}{A}=\frac{3}{5}\left(\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\right)\left(\frac{3\pi ^2}{2}\rho _0\right)^{\frac{2}{3}}$$
(12)   
Therefore, the saturation density, $`\rho _0`$, is solution of

$$\rho _0\left(\frac{\frac{E}{A}}{\rho }\right)_{\rho =\rho _0}=0=\frac{2}{3}\frac{E_k}{A}+\frac{3}{8}t_0\rho _0+\frac{(\sigma +1)}{16}t_3\rho _0^{(\sigma +1)}$$
(13)   
which is nothing but the annulation of the pressure at the saturation point (at zero temperature). The infinite nuclear matter incompressibility $`K_{\mathrm{}}`$is then given by

$$K_{\mathrm{}}=9\rho _0^2\left(\frac{^2\frac{E}{A}}{\rho ^2}\right)_{\rho =\rho _0}=2\frac{E_k}{A}+\frac{9\sigma (\sigma +1)}{16}t_3\rho _0^{(1+\sigma )}$$
(14)   
These three relations (11), (13) and (14) provide an univocal relation between the saturation point properties $`\rho _0`$, $`\frac{E}{A}`$ and $`K_{\mathrm{}}`$ and the force parameters $`t_0,t_3`$ and $`\sigma `$. The parameter $`c`$ does not influence the infinite uniform medium properties.

If we compute the EOS associated with the parametrization (4) we get similar expressions provided that we use the relation (6): $`t_0=t_0^{}+\frac{16}{3}\pi a^3V_0`$. The parameter $`V_0`$ and $`a`$ are related through the relation (7) but are not directly constrained by the EOS. However, for a finite system the relation between (2) and (4) is only valid at the lowest order in $`a`$. Therefore, this parameter should remains small. Following ref.  we have fixed $`a`$ to $`0.45979fm.`$ Parameters values leading to same properties as $`SIII`$ and $`SkM^{}`$ for our parameterization are shown in table 1.

As an illustration, we have plotted the various isentropic EOS in infinite nuclear matter in figure 1 (Top). We have also plotted the isentropic and the isothermal spinodal regions defined as the region where the derivative of the pressure versus the density at constant entropy or temperature is negative. Therefore, in these regions the matter is mechanically unstable against density fluctuations: these are the so-called spinodal instabilities which might be responsible for the fragmentation of the system.

Let us now come to the simulation of finite systems. These numerical simulations consist in two distinct parts: the first one is the initialization of abraded nuclei and the second one the TDHF dynamics.

### 3.3 Initialization of finite systems

The first step is to initialize our system according to the equation (1). The method used in order to generate a hot and diluted initial source proceeds as follow:

* First we look for the ground state of the nucleus with $`A_i=A\mathrm{\Delta }A_i`$ nucleons. To do so we use the imaginary time method with a small constraint $`\lambda r^2`$ added to the mean field in order to get occupied states, $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_h`$ ( $`h`$ for hole states), and the associated one-body density $`\rho =_h|\mathrm{\Phi }_hn_h\mathrm{\Phi }_h|`$ where the occupation number are given by equation (9) at zero temperature. Diagonalizing the Schrödinger equation

$$\left\{\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\frac{d}{dr^2}+\frac{\mathrm{}^2l(l+1)}{2mr^2}+U(\rho (r))+\lambda r^2\right\}R_{nl}(r)=\epsilon _{nl}R_{nl}(r)$$
(15)   
we can define the single particle states $`\left(nl\right)`$. The small constraint $`\lambda r^2`$ insures a limited number of orbitals for treating the continuum. In analogy with the nuclear matter, we define the saturation density, $`\rho _0\left(A_i\right)`$, as the central averaged density in a sphere of $`2fm`$.
* Then, single particle states are occupied according to a Fermi-Dirac statistic (9) using a temperature $`T`$ as a free parameter. This temperature is defined iteratively in such a way that after the scaling described below, we get the excitation energy defined by Eq. (1)<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1For each $`\mathrm{\Delta }A_i`$, we can define the excitation energy by subtracting the ground state energy of a cold nucleus of size $`A\mathrm{\Delta }A_i`$ to the energy of the excited nucleus after rescaling. For all these calculations, we have used the expression of the energy corresponding to the potential (4)    
$$E=E_{kin}+\left\{\frac{3}{8}t_0\rho (\stackrel{}{r})^2+\frac{1}{16}t_3\rho (\stackrel{}{r})^{(\sigma +2)}+\frac{V_0}{2}Y\left(rr^{}\right)\rho (r)\rho (r^{})𝑑\stackrel{}{r^{}}\right\}𝑑\stackrel{}{r}+E_C$$
(16)  In this expression, $`E_{kin}`$ and $`E_C`$ are respectively the kinetic and Coulomb energy.. The chemical potential is determined requiring that the total number of particle is $`A\mathrm{\Delta }A_i.`$ The initial entropy of the system is defined by

$$S=4\underset{nl}{}\left(2l+1\right)\left(n_{nl}\mathrm{log}n_{nl}+(1n_{nl})\mathrm{log}(1n_{nl})\right)$$
(17)
* Finally we apply a scaling to each radial wave functions

$$R_{nl}^{new}(r)=𝒩R_{nl}(\frac{r}{\delta })$$
(18)   
where $`𝒩`$ is a normalization factor. Then we compute the average density $`\rho \left(A_i\right)`$ at the center of the nucleus (within a sphere of 2 fm) and we fix $`\delta `$ in order to get the desired dilatation factor $`\eta =\frac{\rho \left(A_i\right)}{\rho _0\left(A_i\right)}=0.8`$.

After the initialization step we are following an ensemble of diluted nuclei with mass $`A\mathrm{\Delta }A_i`$ and corresponding excitation energy $`E_i^{}`$. Each one is associated with an initial entropy $`S_i`$. A sample of various initial conditions are given in table 2. Figure 2 presents various density profiles. On this graph one can spot only minor differences between the two forces.

In order to get a deeper insight in the properties of finite systems, we have plotted the energy of the considered nuclei as a function of their central density: $`E=f(\eta )`$ (fig.(1) middle and bottom). Each curve is obtained by scaling the wave-functions at fixed occupation numbers (which means that along these curves $`S=cte`$<sup>2</sup><sup>2</sup>2These relations between $`E`$ , $`\eta `$ and $`S`$ can be considered as a finite system equation of states.). Middle part of fig. (1) corresponds to a $`{}_{}{}^{197}{}_{79}{}^{}`$Au for various entropies whereas bottom corresponds to masses and entropies reported in table 2.

These curves can be compared to the infinite medium EOS shown in figure 1 (Top). As far as the dynamics is concerned, these isentropic curves have only a meaning if the time dependent density profiles could be obtained one from another by a simple scaling in r-space. This is equivalent to consider the breathing mode as dominant and to neglect other fluctuations in density.

Figure 1 illustrates the fact that finite systems have surface and Coulomb contributions to their energy. This modifies the saturation energy to 8-9 MeV (depending upon the mass of the nucleus considered) instead of 16 MeV found in the case of a neutral infinite system. Moreover, it changes the curvature of the isentropes i.e. it changes the effective compressibility modulus. However, this compressibility remains the main difference between the two ensembles of calculations associated with the two different forces. These isentropes will help us in the understanding of the dynamical evolutions since, in a naive picture, the collective vibration should oscillate around the minimum of the energy for the considered entropy and the turning points of the breathing mode should be simply obtained by requiring energy conservation <sup>3</sup><sup>3</sup>3 Note that, picture (1) depends upon the size of the sphere we have taken in order to define the density ( here r=2 fm). This will be discussed in the following..

### 3.4 TDHF evolution

Having defined the initial conditions as a given nucleus of size $`A_i=A\mathrm{\Delta }A_i`$, a given excitation energy and the dilatation coefficient $`\eta =0.8`$, we let the system evolve through the TDHF equations <sup>4</sup><sup>4</sup>4For the evolution, we have taken a step of time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=0.75fm/c`$. We have discretize the r-space in step of size $`\mathrm{\Delta }r=0.2fm`$, the total size of the r-space being 300 fm, this size is big enough to avoid bouncing of evaporated particles against boundaries.

$$i\mathrm{}\frac{R_{nl}(r,t)}{t}=\left\{\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\frac{}{r^2}+\frac{\mathrm{}^2l(l+1)}{2mr^2}+U\left[\rho \right](r,t)\right\}R_{nl}(r,t)$$
(19)   
The potential term $`U\left[\rho \right]`$ is the same as in equation (4). The TDHF equations have the particularity to conserve occupation numbers ($`n_{nl}`$) of single particle levels.

$$\frac{d}{dt}n_{nl}=0$$
(20)   
The entropy of the whole system (17) is thus conserved during the evolution. On the other hand the total energy of the system is also conserved. However, during the evolution, nuclei are evaporating particles and a tail at large distance will develop for the various wave functions $`R_{nl}`$. We can try to investigate this process using the methods developed in  which consist in splitting the r-space into two parts :

* a sphere containing the initial nucleus, here we have considered a sphere of radius 15 fm. This part of the system will be called the nucleus in the rest of this article.
* the rest of the space which will be considered as evaporated particles<sup>5</sup><sup>5</sup>5We are considering very large space in order to avoid the reflections of the wave packets on the boundaries of the considered r-space..

Therefore, due to the particle evaporation, the nucleus is continuously loosing mass, energy and entropy <sup>6</sup><sup>6</sup>6 In general at very low excitation energy the nucleus can even gain entropy because of the dissipation of the collective motion.. We are thus in the same framework as in ref. but with a microscopic model. However, the TDHF approach is neglecting the effect of the collisions and this might induce differences between our simulations and those of ref.. These differences are expected to be not too important because in a self-similar expansion of infinite nuclear matter, the gain and the loss term due to collisions cancel, so that the mean field dominates the dynamics. In a finite system, the collisions do not exactly cancel as it is known from the calculation of the small amplitude motion. This should be kept in mind when the various models are compared.

## 4 Discussion of the expansion dynamics

### 4.1 Evolution of global quantities: evaporation and monopole expansion

In this section, we study the evolution of the various considered nuclei. In fig.(3), we have plotted the evolution of masses and entropies of the systems reported in table 2. All these quantities are computed within a sphere of 15 fm. From this picture we can see that the smaller are the initial masses, the larger are the energies and entropies and so are the number of evaporated particles. Indeed, one can observe that the evaporation is stronger for light highly excited systems with a rapid decrease of the mass and the entropy. Moreover, in TDHF approach the evaporation is treated in quantum mechanics, particle may be reflected several time by the potential well before being ejected from the nucleus. Therefore, the particle evaporation appears rather slow.

This monopole motion can be clearly seen in figure 4 which displays the time evolution of the central densities for different initial conditions. From this figure, as expected, collective motion is slower and presents a larger amplitude motion in the case of a soft EOS.

### 4.2 Discussion of the Collective dynamics

In these figures, we do not observe the fast expansion towards low density regions. Indeed, at moderate energies ($`T<5`$ MeV), we observe that the first minimum (i.e. the first turning point) appears to be close from the initial dilution (see for example $`A=191`$). At low excitation energies, the small dilution of the abrasion-ablation stage is followed by a recompression phase. Then, when the system expands again, the average density may reach values lower than the initial one.

Conversely, in a simple description assuming a collective dynamics at almost constant entropy and mass, this behavior should be normally understood considering the energetics of isentropes as shown in figure 1. Indeed, schematically, if the system is initially with an excitation energy, $`E_0`$, and an entropy, $`S_0`$, it will expand or contract till it has reached the other point of the isentrope $`S=S_0`$ which cut a horizontal line corresponding to the energy $`E=E_0`$. This schematic procedure is illustrated in figure 6. Values of turning points obtained with this simple construction as well as the one of ref are compared to those extracted from the simulation in table 4.

For $`A=150`$ and $`A=111`$, one can see only little differences between results of the schematic construction and those of the exact dynamics. However, they are different for $`A=191`$ and $`A=89`$. Considering table 4 and figure 4, several comments should be made:

* i) For high excitation energies (small masses), the schematic construction based on energy and entropy conservation predicts a total vaporization of the nucleus whereas in the dynamical simulations a small residue survives. This discrepancy can be accounted for by considering the energy and entropy variation due to the evaporation of particles (see fig.3).
* ii) for low excitation energy (for example $`A=191`$), evaporation is negligeable (S=cte, T=cte (fig. 3)) and the result could be directly compared to the schematic construction. However, we observe that TDHF predictions differ from schematic predictions. In the schematic model, from figure 6, starting with a nucleus of mass $`A=191`$ at $`\eta =0.8`$, it appears impossible to reach a dilution lower than the initial one since the diluted nucleus is predicted to undergo a compression right after the beginning of the calculation. In TDHF simulations, the system is able to reach lower densities than the initial one by creating a hole at the center of the nucleus. Moreover, instead of undergoing damped monopolar oscillations, the nucleus reaches a much lower value of central density at the second dilatation<sup>7</sup><sup>7</sup>7 Note that, this effect is not due to the Coulomb interaction and so is not analogous to the phenomenon reported by Borderie et al in ref. , since removing the Coulomb potential from our simulations do not modify the observed behavior. .

As far as the comparison of TDHF simulation and the results of  is concerned, the values of the turning points reported in table 4 appears to be different. At high initial temperature ($`T>5`$ MeV) and for masses lower than $`150`$, the amplitude of the expansion is larger in the collective model than in TDHF. At low temperature, the TDHF expansion is more complex than a breathing mode picture. In this picture, the central density is taken to be the only relevant variable since a self similar expansion is explicitly assumed. In fig. 5. we show a typical example of density profile for different times of the evolution for $`A=191`$. From this picture, it is clear that hollow structures are created during the evolution and that one density profile at a given time could not be obtained from another one by a simple scaling. The existence of exotic shapes which are created during the expansion, was already suggested in several works . The main novelty found here as we will see, is that these structures are consequences of the beating of intrinsic collective modes. In order to get a deeper insight, we will focus on the collective dynamics in the following<sup>8</sup><sup>8</sup>8 In the rest of the paper, we will discuss only the soft-EOS since the effect we are discussing here are generic and, from the qualitative point of view, do not depend upon the compressibility of the force used in the simulation (see fig. 4)..

### 4.3 Collective dynamics

In this section, we have generalized the analysis performed in ref. to many different initial conditions. In TDHF calculation, no assumption is made on which collective degrees of freedom could develop during the evolution.

In order to better understand the complex dynamics of the density $`\rho (r,t)`$, we have plotted in the fig.7 its Fourier transform $`\rho (r,\omega )`$ performed over 1500 fm/c. This corresponds to the expected breathing vibration and indeed the radial dependence of the density variation $`\rho (r,\omega )`$ is well fitted by the usual Tassie transition density.

In fig.7, we observe several other collective higher at higher energies. For $`\eta =0.8`$, we have many additional waves at frequencies $`17`$, $`20`$, $`25`$ and around $`40MeV`$. The collective motion located at $`212.525MeV`$ corresponds to the two-phonon excitation of the breathing mode vibration. The other peaks at $`17`$, $`20`$ and around $`40MeV`$ could be associated to other collective degrees of freedom.

In order to study either a possible anharmonicity or a coupling between modes, we have investigated the role of the vibration amplitude changing the initial conditions. In a pure harmonic picture, frequencies should remain constant and amplitudes of responses should vary linearly with the initial perturbation. Focussing on the middle and bottom part of fig. 7, we see first that the frequencies are almost constant but the amplitude of the response do not depend linearly on the initial perturbation. Therefore, the nuclei presents non-linearities and mode couplings but they are not strong enough to destroy the collective motions. This means that we are still far from a chaotic regime.

In this chapter, we have pointed out that not only the breathing mode is excited in our TDHF calculation but also other modes. These modes are highly non-local in $`r`$. This induces a complex dynamics and in particular may lead to the creation of hollow structure. Up to now, many different macroscopic models have been used in order to extract information about the break-up of highly excited nuclear systems. In these approaches, the breathing vibration is taken to be dominant and the expansion is assumed to be a time-dependent self-similar expansion of the nucleus. However, this picture fails to reproduce our calculation which indicate that we must extend our collective phase space to include more degrees of freedom. In the next chapter, we will address this question and illustrate a possible generalization the EOS of a finite nucleus in order to include hollow structures.

## 5 Inclusion of Hollow shapes of the nucleus.

During the evolution, we have seen that the nucleus could reach low density region by creating a hole at its center. In order to study this type of shape, we have parameterized the density profile as follow:

$`\rho (r,t)=𝒜\left({\displaystyle \frac{\rho _1\alpha (t)^3}{1+\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{r\alpha (t)R_1}{a_1}\right)}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _2/\beta (t)^3}{1+\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{r/\beta (t)R_2}{a_2}\right)}}\right)`$ (21)   
In this expression, $`𝒜`$ is fixed in order to conserve the number of particles. The coefficients $`\rho _i`$, $`R_i`$ and $`a_i`$ are fixed by fitting the density obtained during the evolution of the nucleus $`A=191`$ at time $`t=108fm/c`$ (see figure 5). $`\rho _1`$, $`R_1`$ and $`a_1`$ are respectively equal to $`0.0826fm^3`$, $`3.09fm`$ and $`0.598fm`$ whereas $`\rho _2`$, $`R_2`$ and $`a_2`$ are equal to $`0.1354fm^3`$, $`6.98fm`$ and $`0.528fm`$. With this parameterization, the information contained in the density profile is now reduced to only two coefficients $`\alpha (t)`$ and $`\beta (t)`$. If $`\alpha (t)`$ is less than zero, the nucleus presents a hole at its center, otherwise, it presents a bump. Since $`\rho _2`$ is much bigger than $`\rho _1`$, for low values of $`\alpha `$, the parameter $`\beta `$ could be approximatively seen as a global scaling of the nucleus ($`\beta >1`$ corresponds to a dilatation whereas $`\beta <1`$ is a compression).

In figure 5, we have traced results of the best fit we have obtained for the different density displayed. Values of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are reported in table 5.

We can see that this parameterization seems to be particularly suitable and represents well the different density profiles, so that the time dependent evolution could be accurately replaced by the evolution of the two parameters $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$. Since we now include a more general class of density shapes, this phase-space is a generalized approach of the breathing mode picture, the two variables being now interpreted as two collective coordinates.

### 5.1 Generalization of the zero temperature equation of state.

Using the parameterization (21) we can define the EOS in the $`(\alpha ,\beta )`$ phase space by computing the energy at zero temperature for different $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ parameters. Since eq. (21) defines only the density profile and not the wave-functions, we have used the Extended Thomas Fermi formalism described in  where two additional terms are added to the usual Thomas Fermi kinetic energy

$`E_K(r)=E_{TF}(r)+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{36}}{\displaystyle \frac{\left(\rho (r)\right)^2}{\rho (r)}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{\Delta }\rho (r)\right)`$ (22)   
In this expression, $`E_{TF}`$ take the form (12). The total energy is calculated by incorporating the potential (2) and integrating over the r-space.

By varying the parameters, we can have the generalized EOS: $`E=E(\alpha ,\beta )`$. This EOS is represented in fig.8. The graphic of a self-similar picture displayed in figure 6 for $`A=191`$ could be recovered by cutting the graphic with a surface $`\alpha =f(\beta )`$ (which could be roughly approximated by $`\alpha cte`$. In this picture, we can see different potential wells with different minima with almost degenerated energies separated by small barriers (of the order of $`12`$ MeV). These three minima correspond respectively to a nucleus with a hole ($`\alpha <0`$), a standard Wood-Saxon shape ($`\alpha =0`$) and a nucleus with a bump at the center ($`\alpha >0`$).

In order to study the evolution of the system in this $`E(\alpha ,\beta )`$ phase-space, we have performed a fit of the density profile at each time. Results is shown up to $`108fm/c`$ in figure 9. The path in this phase-space appears complex and cannot be reduced to a scaling of the $`\beta `$ variable. This is another indication of the fact that we cannot reduce the TDHF dynamics to a breathing mode picture. During the evolution, we see that the nucleus could go in many different configurations in this phase space.

In summary, the dynamical expansion as the one studied by  assumes a predominance of the breathing mode. In a microscopic calculation, other collective vibrations can be excited during the dynamical evolution. This lead to a complex dynamics for hot and compressed (or dilated) systems for moderate energies. As a direct consequence, the dynamics should be discussed in an enlarged phase-space of several collective degrees-of-freedom. The illustrative pictures (8 and 9) seem to indicate that energetically hollow and uniform nuclei should be both taken into account on the same level. Note however, that for initial temperature greater than $`5`$ MeV, many orbitals are occupied and levels crossing seems less important and we do not observe this effect anymore.

Finally, we want to mention that the theoretical determination of an effective temperature during the evolution of the expanding source, is often a hard task and is often not possible since the system is only equilibrated at the initial time. During the dynamics, the nucleus is strongly out-of equilibrium and no energy and occupations numbers of levels could be defined on the same time (no approximative Fermi-Dirac distribution could be defined <sup>9</sup><sup>9</sup>9Indeed, during the evolution the Hamiltonian $`\widehat{h}`$ and the density $`\widehat{\rho }`$ do not commute.). However, we can imagine another way of defining the temperature. Indeed, it is possible to follow the density and the energy of the excited system with time. In a breathing mode picture, we have a univocal correpondance between these two parameters and the temperature: i.e. the EOS $`E=E(\rho ,T)`$. However, this picture breaks in our calculation since we have to consider at least $`E=E(\alpha ,\beta ,T)`$ and in fact two parameters are often not enough. In conclusion, the determination of an effective temperature in models as the one we are considering, is not well-defined as far as no equilibration process is added on top of the mean-field.

## 6 Discussion

We have used a quantum microscopic simulation in order to discuss the interpretation of the caloric curve recently proposed by Papp and Nörenberg. In their work the experimentally observed caloric curve may be interpreted as a line of turning-point reached in the low density region during the monopole expansion of excited nuclei where the nucleus could break. Using analogous initial conditions, we have pointed out that many differences between a microscopic approach and the collective model. Indeed at low and moderate energies, the TDHF dynamics indicates that different collective vibrations could develop on top of the self-similar vibration. This collective behavior may lead to the formation of hollow structures. Since the density come from a superposition of many modes, we see that the lowest density region could be reached after a longer time (see fig. 4) than the first breathing of the nucleus. It should be noticed that experimental DATA of photon detection seems to indicate such a behavior. The presence of many collective modes in the dynamic has led us to generalize the simple breathing mode picture. By a suitable parameterization of the density, we have defined a generalized Equation Of State. This new approach, include the possible existence of exotic shape in the dynamic. As we have seen, the nucleus has a complex path in this new phase-space. On the other hand, at high initial excitation energy, when the breathing collective mode dominates, the amplitude of the monopole oscillation is also different from the one reported in. Since our simulations demonstrate that the collective dynamics of an abraded nucleus could be complex and depends on the model used. The possible interpretation of the caloric curve as a line of turning-point has to be considered carefully.

## 7 Acknowledgements

We thank J.P. Wieleczko and A. Chbihi for helpfull discussion on the manuscript.