EXTENDED THOMAS-FERMI DESCRIPTION OF ROTATING NUCLEI

We present a semiclassical description of rotating nuclei in the frame work of the Extended Thomas-Fermi density functional theory up to orde r <(h)over bar (2)> It leads to functional expressions of quantities s uch as the kinetic energy, current and spin vector densities in terms of the local (spin-scalar) density rho((r) over right arrow) alone. Fo r effective nucleon-nucleon interactions of the Skyrme type a simple a nalytical expression is obtained for moments of inertia. It consists, at lowest order, of the Thomas-Fermi (TF) term which is shown to be id entical to the rigid-body moment of inertia and semiclassical correcti ons of order <(h)over bar (2)> which are small. The importance of the Thouless-Valatin selfconsistency terms which are included in our appro ach, is pointed out. Within this approach we have performed self-consi stent semiclassical calculations in the restricted space of diffuse (F ermi type) densities and ellipsoidal triaxial shapes. Our analysis is qualitatively consistent with LDM results as in the paper by Cohen, Pl asil and Swiatecki. However a significant dependence of the LDM parame ters as function of the angular momentum has been pointed out. General izing our method to finite temperature we recover functional expressio ns formally similar to the T = 0 case with temperature dependent coeff icients. The above formalism has also been extended to the semi-quanta l description of other large amplitude collective modes and of their c ouplings. In particular it has been applied to the dynamics of a rigid rotation coupled with a simple (uniform) intrinsic vortical motion.