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Proton-neutron entanglement in the nuclear shell model

2023; IOP Publishing; Volume: 50; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1088/1361-6471/acbece

1361-6471

Calvin Johnson, Oliver C. Gorton,

Nuclear physics research studies

We compute the proton-neutron entanglement entropy in the interacting nuclear shell model for a variety of nuclides and interactions. Some results make intuitive sense, for example that the shell structure, as governed by single-particle and monopole energies, strongly affects the energetically available space and thus the entanglement entropy. We also find a surprising result: that the entanglement entropy at low excitation energy tends to decrease for nuclides when $N \neq Z$. While we provide evidence this arises from the physical nuclear force by contrasting with random two-body interactions which shows no such decrease, the exact mechanism is unclear. Nonetheless, the low entanglement suggests that in models of neutron-rich nuclides, the coupling between protons and neutrons may be less computationally demanding than one might otherwise expect.