Time-dependent Green's Functions Approach to Nuclear Reactions

Nonequilibrium Green's functions represent underutilized means of studying the time evolution of quantum many-body systems. The Kadanoff-Baym equations describe the time evolution of quantum systems including memory effects and correlations beyond the mean field [1]. In nuclear physics, these have been solved for homogeneous matter [2,3], but few is known about the effects that correlations induce in a dynamical description of finite nuclei. This is particularly relevant for the case of central low-energy reactions (fusion, fission), where dissipative effects come into play [4]. We discuss the mean-field evolution for the density matrix of colliding slabs in 1D [5] and describe the extension of the dynamics to the correlated case in the Born approximation. \newline [1] G. Baym, Phys. Rev. 127, 1391 (1962). \newline [2] P. Danielewicz, Ann. Phys. 152, 305 (1984). \newline [3] H. S. K\"ohler, Phys. Rev. C 51, 3232 (1995). \newline [4] M. Tohyama and A. S. Umar, Phys. Rev. C 65, 037601 (2002). \newline [5] A. Rios and P. Danielewicz, arxiv:0801.4171.