Nuclear surface vibrations cause dissipation as well as fluctuations of the relative motion between heavy ions. Viewing these as transport phenomena, we derive explicit formulae for the induced force and the correlation functions in terms of the spectrum of the nuclear vibrations and the coupling form factor. We provide a general proof that the path integral approach and the density operator formalism lead to equivalent transport coefficients as long as the influence functional takes a standard form. As an illustration, we then analyze 84Sr+Z~ scattering. We discuss the properties of the potential renormalization, and explain the mechanism of the high lying vibrations becoming dominant in dissipation with increasing bombarding energy by examining the properties of the retarded friction function.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.