Thermal Hartree-Fock in the thermodynamic limit: Statistical approach

The thermal Hartree-Fock formalism for nuclear matter is studied, for the case of effective, density dependent interactions. An alternative method based on statistical assumptions, enabling one to determine both HF quantities and their thermal average and that is considerably simpler than the usual (double) iterative procedure is proposed and numerically illustrated for the Skyrme interaction. The connection with the Modified Thomas Fermi method for finite temperature is discussed. (orig.)