The residual interaction of bound nucleons-two-nucleon matrix elements deduced from transfer experiments

Matrix elements for the effective two-nucleon interaction have been deduced from the population of multiplets near closed shells as observed in direct transfer reactions. In the evaluation, the limited purity of such multiples was taken into consideration, typically by weighting the observed fractions of the two-nucleon configurations by their spectroscopic strenghts and by using the resulting energy centroids. In a few cases, off-diagonal matrix elements are available from empirical wave funcitons. The systematic errors for particle-particle matrix elements extracted directly and those obtained from Pandya transformations were found to go in opposite directions. In some cases, this feautre of the empirical mehtod could be used to suggest upper and lower “bounds” for the extracted matrix elements. Diagonal matrix elements for the empirical residual interaction show a number of features suggestive of an underlying simplicity in the interaction of bound nucleons. Within experimental uncertainties (of about 10% for T=0 matrix elements) the monopole parts of the matrix elements are fit well with a simple A?0.75 dependence, and the data available to date do not reveal any significant monopole dependence on the quantum numbers of the interacting nucleons. The usefulness of scaling is suggested. Generally, diagonal matrix elements E_J(j₁, j₂) normalized by the extracted A-dependent monopole strength agree within expected experimental uncertainties whether derived from particle-particle or particle-hole multiples and whether extracted from the beginning or the end of a major shell. For values J≠0, the diagonal E_J(j²) matrix elements seem to follow two universal functions which depend on the semi-classical coupling angles θ₁₂, but are otherwise independent on j. For j₁≠j₂ several “typical” functions ?(θ₁₂) can be constructed which fit subsets of the data and differ in a predictable way. The general features of the bound-nucleon interaction appear consistent with those of theoretical matrix elements based on a number of short-range model forces or on calculations using the G matrix approach to deal with realistic free nucleon forces. For the latter, the available theoretical numbers for j₁=j₂ agree well with the T=1 set, but they differ quantitatively from the observed matrix elements for T=0, sometimes by many (experimental) standard deviations.