α-Particle Clustering from Expanding Self-Conjugate Nuclei within the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov Approach

The nuclear equation of state (EOS) is explored with the constrained Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov approach for self-conjugate nuclei. It is found that beyond a certain low, more or less universal density, those nuclei spontaneously cluster into A=4 alpha particles with A the nucleon number. The energy at the threshold density increases linearly with the number of alpha particles as does the experimental threshold energy. Taking off the spurious c. m. energy of each alpha particle almost gives agreement between theory and experiment. The implications of these results with respect to alpha clustering and the nuclear EOS at low density are discussed.