Differences between dynamical theories of giant resonances

It is the objective of dynamical theories of collective excitations to describe the influence of particle-vibration coupling on the excitation energies of giant resonances. This yields dynamical corrections to the energies calculated in the random-phase approximation (RPA). The existing dynamical theories can be characterized by the effective particle-hole gap which they prescribe for RPA-type calculations of collective excitations. We investigate three dynamical theories in the framework of a schematic model for the nucleon self-energy. In the case of the giant dipole resonance in ²⁰⁸Pb, the microscopic dynamical model prescribes an effective p-h gap which is smaller than the experimental value; in contradistinction, the effective p-h gap is larger than the experimental value in the case of the isoscalar octupole surface vibration. These dynamical corrections are opposite to the corrections predicted by two other models which have been proposed. The origin of these differences is discussed.