Many-body effects in nuclear structure

We calculate, for the first time, the state-dependent pairing gap of a finite nucleus (120Sn) diagonalizing the bare nucleon-nucleon potential (Argonne v14) in a Hartree-Fock basis (with effective k-mass mk ≈ 0.7m), within the framework of the generalized Bogoliubov-Valatin approximation including scattering states up to 800 MeV above the Fermi energy to achieve convergence. The resulting gap accounts for about half of the experimental gap. The combined effect of the bare nucleon-nucleon potential and of the induced pairing interaction arising from the exchange of low-lying surface vibrations between nucleons moving in time-reversal states close to the Fermi energy accounts for the experimental gap.