Systematics of isovector and isoscalar giant quadrupole resonances in normal and superfluid spherical nuclei

Abstract

The isoscalar (IS) and isovector (IV) quadrupole responses of nuclei are systematically investigated using the time-dependent Skyrme energy density functional including pairing in the BCS approximation. Using two different Skyrme functionals, Sly4 and SkM*, respectively 263 and 324 nuclei have been found to be spherical along the nuclear charts. The time-dependent evolution of these nuclei has been systematically investigated, giving access to their quadrupole responses. It is shown that the mean energy of the collective high-energy state globally reproduces the experimental IS and IV collective energy but fails to reproduce their lifetimes. It is found that the mean collective energy depends rather significantly on the functional used in the mean-field channel. Pairing by competing with parity effects can slightly affect the collective response around magic numbers and induces a reduction of the collective energy compared to the average trend. Low-lying states, that can only be considered if pairing is included, are investigated. While the approach provides a fair estimate of the low-lying state energy, it strongly underestimates the transition rate $B(E2)$. Finally, the possibility to access the density dependence of the symmetry energy through parallel measurements of both the IS and IV giant quadrupole resonances is discussed.