The nuclear N-body problem and the effective interaction in self-consistent mean-field methods

This work deals with two aspects of mean-field type methods extensively used in low-energy nuclear structure. The first study is at the mean-field level. The link between the wave-function describing an even-even nucleus and the odd-even neighbor is revisited. To get a coherent description as a function of the pairing intensity in the system, the utility of the formalization of this link through a two steps process is demonstrated. This two-steps process allows to identify the role played by different channels of the force when a nucleon is added in the system. In particular, perturbative formula evaluating the contribution of time-odd components of the functional to the nucleon separation energy are derived for zero and realistic pairing intensities. Self-consistent calculations validate the developed scheme as well as the derived perturbative formula. This first study ends up with an extended analysis of the odd-even mass staggering in nuclei. The new scheme allows to identify the contribution to this observable coming from different channels of the force. The necessity of a better understanding of time-odd terms in order to decide which odd-even mass formulae extracts the pairing gap the most properly is identified. These terms being nowadays more or less out of control, extended studies are needed to make precise the fit of a pairing force through the comparison of theoretical and experimental odd-even mass differences. The second study deals with beyond mean-field methods taking care of the correlations associated with large amplitude oscillations in nuclei. Their effects are usually incorporated through the GCM or the projected mean-field method. We derive a perturbation theory motivating such variational calculations from a diagrammatic point of view for the first time. Resuming two-body correlations in the energy expansion, we obtain an effective interaction removing the hard-core problem in the context of configuration mixing calculations. Proceeding to a local approximation, the first theoretically motivated prescription of the density dependence of phenomenological forces to be used in configuration mixing calculations is proposed. Dealing with another origin of the density dependence of the interaction, the renormalization of multi-body forces effects through a dependence of the interaction on the mixed density is demonstrated. Thus, the extended Skyrme force deduced from these formal results is tested through configuration mixing calculations in 186Pb. The difficult reproduction of data illustrating the shape coexistence phenomenon in this nucleus is addressed. (author)