Microscopic analysis of the octupole phase transition in Th isotopes

A shape phase transition between stable octupole deformation and octupole vibrations in Th nuclei is analyzed in a microscopic framework based on nuclear density functional theory. The relativistic functional DD-PC1 is used to calculate axially-symmetric quadrupole-octupole constrained energy surfaces. Observables related to order parameters are computed using an interacting-boson Hamiltonian, with parameters determined by mapping the microscopic energy surfaces to the expectation value of the Hamiltonian in the boson condensate. The systematics of constrained energy surfaces and low-energy excitation spectra point to the occurrence of a phase transition between octupole-deformed shapes and shapes characterized by octupole-soft potentials.