Theory of Finite Nuclei

A theory of finite nuclei is formulated, based on the reaction-matrix theory of the nuclear many-body system. The reaction matrix appropriate to the finite nucleus is in the exact theory determined by the solution of coupled Hartree-Fock and reaction-matrix self consistency problems. This formal procedure is extremely difficult to carry out; the finite-nucleus reaction matrix has instead been approximated by the reaction matrix appropriate to the local density, which is a nonlocal coordinate space operator ($\mathrm{r}\mathrm{}\left|K\right|\mathrm{}{\mathrm{r}}^{\prime }$). It is shown that this approximation is equivalent to the assumption that a finite nucleus has the same short-range correlation structure as nuclear matter.