M. Centelles et X. Vinas, SEMICLASSICAL APPROACH TO THE DESCRIPTION OF SEMIINFINITE NUCLEAR-MATTER IN RELATIVISTIC MEAN-FIELD THEORY, Nuclear physics. A, 563(2), 1993, pp. 173-204
The surface and curvature energies as well as the surface thickness of
semi-infinite nuclear matter are studied in the framework of the rela
tivistic mean-field theory. The calculations are performed for linear
and non-linear sigmaomega models, using a relativistic extended Thomas
-Fermi method which includes gradient corrections to order h2BAR. The
connections between the structure of the nuclear surface and the prope
rties of uniform nuclear matter and the meson degrees of freedom are u
nderlined. For reasonable saturation properties, it is shown that real
istic values of the surface energy and the surface thickness can be si
multaneously obtained in non-linear sigmaomega models. In this case th
e calculated curvature energy turns out to be considerably larger than
the empirical estimates. We conclude that the relativistic effects in
the mean-field approach cannot solve the so-called nuclear curvature
energy puzzle. Comparisons with non-relativistic semiclassical calcula
tions for Skyrme interactions are also made.