The time-dependent relativistic mean-field theory and the random phase approximation

The Relativistic Random Phase Approximation (RRPA) is derived from the Time-dependent Relativistic Mean Field (TD RMF) theory in the limit of small amplitude oscillations. In the no-sea approximation of the RMF theory, the RRPA configuration space includes not only the usual particle-hole states, but also a-h configurations, i.e. pairs formed from occupied states in the Fermi sea and empty negative-energy states in the Dirac sea. The contribution of the negative energy states to the RRPA matrices is examined in a schematic model, and the large effect of Dirac sea states on isoscalar strength distributions is illustrated for the giant monopole resonance in 116Sn. It is shown that, because the matrix elements of the time-like component of the vector meson fields which couple the a-h configurations with the ph-configurations are strongly reduced with respect to the corresponding matrix elements of the isoscalar scalar meson field, the inclusion of states with unperturbed energies more than 1.2 GeV below the Fermi energy has a pronounced effect on giant resonances with excitation energies in the MeV region. The influence of nuclear magnetism, i.e. the effect of the spatial components of the vector fields is examined, and the difference between the non-relativistic and relativistic RPA predictions for the nuclear matter compression modulus is explained.