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 α particles with A the nucleon number. The energy at the threshold density increases linearly with the number of α particles as does the experimental threshold energy. Taking off the spurious c.m. energy of each α particle almost gives agreement between theory and experiment. The implications of these results with respect to α clustering and the nuclear EOS at low density are discussed.