Dynamical Symmetries Reflected in Realistic Interactions

Realistic nucleon-nucleon (NN) interactions, derived within the framework of meson theory or more recently in terms of chiral effective field theory, yield new possibilities for achieving a unified microscopic description of atomic nuclei. Based on spectral distribution methods, a comparison of these interactions to a most general Sp(4) dynamically symmetric interaction, which previously we found to reproduce well that part of the interaction that is responsible for shaping pairing-governed isobaric analog 0+ states, can determine the extent to which this significantly simpler model Hamiltonian can be used to obtain an approximate, yet very good description of low-lying nuclear structure. And furthermore, one can apply this model in situations that would otherwise be prohibitive because of the size of the model space. In addition, we introduce a Sp(4) symmetry breaking term by including the quadrupole-quadrupole interaction in the analysis and examining the capacity of this extended model interaction to imitate realistic interactions. This provides a further step towards gaining a better understanding of the underlying foundation of realistic interactions and their ability to reproduce striking features of nuclei such as strong pairing correlations or collective rotational motion.