Damping of nuclear collective motion in the extended mean-field theory

The dissipation mechanism in slow nuclear collective motion is studied in the frame of the extended mean-field theory. The collective motion is treated explicitly by employing a travelling single-particle representation in the semi-classical approximation. The rate of change of the collective kinetic energy is determined by: (i) one-body dissipation, which reflects uncorrelated particle-hole excitations as a result of the collisions of particles with the mean field, (ii) two-body dissipation, which consists of simultaneous 2 particle-2 hole excitations via direct coupling of the residual two-body interactions, and (iii) potential dissipation due to the redistribution of the single-particle energies as a result of the random two-body collisions. In contrast to the first two processes the potential dissipation exhibits memory effects due to the large values of the local equilibration times.