- Open Access
Heisenberg uncertainty inequality and breaking of isospin symmetry in atomic nuclei
Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043319 – Published 22 December, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2qld-w1lm
Abstract
The Heisenberg uncertainty inequality is used to derive a rigorous lower bound to the amount of isospin impurities in atomic nuclei, caused by the violation of isospin symmetry. The bound is fixed by the difference between the neutron and proton radii and the sum of the charge-exchange monopole strengths. It can be used to check the consistency of advanced many-body calculations accounting for the breaking of isospin symmetry. The uncertainty inequality is also employed to derive an upper bound to the isovector dipole moment in terms of the amount of isospin impurities, providing an insightful connection between the violation of parity and isospin symmetries.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
References (55)
- W. Heisenberg, Über den bau der atomkerne. I, Z. Phys. 77, 1 (1932).
- D. M. Brink, Nuclear Forces (Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1965).
- A. Bohr and B. Mottelson, Nuclear Structure (Benjamin, New York, 1969), Vol. 1.
- P. Bączyk, J. Dobaczewski, M. Konieczka, W. Satuła, T. Nakatsukasa, and K. Sato, Isospin-symmetry breaking in masses of nuclei, Phys. Lett. B 778, 178 (2018).
- B. M. Loc, N. Auerbach, and G. Colò, Isospin mixing and Coulomb mixing in ground states of even-even nuclei, Phys. Rev. C 99, 014311 (2019).
- T. Naito, X. Roca-Maza, G. Colò, H. Liang, and H. Sagawa, Isospin symmetry breaking in the charge radius difference of mirror nuclei, Phys. Rev. C 106, L061306 (2022).
- T. Naito, G. Colò, H. Liang, X. Roca-Maza, and H. Sagawa, Effects of Coulomb and isospin symmetry breaking interactions on neutron-skin thickness, Phys. Rev. C 107, 064302 (2023).
- N. A. Smirnova, Isospin-symmetry breaking within the nuclear shell model: Present status and developments, Physics 5, 352 (2023).
- J. A. Sheikh, S. P. Rouoof, R. N. Ali, N. Rather, C. Sarma, and P. C. Srivastava, Isospin symmetry breaking in atomic nuclei, Symmetry 16, 409 (2024).
- O. Moreno, P. Sarriguren, E. Moya de Guerra, J. M. Udias, T. W. Donnelly, and I. Sick, Nuclear isospin mixing and elastic parity-violating electron scattering, Nucl. Phys. A 828, 306 (2009).
- K. Yako, H. Sagawa, and H. Sakai, Neutron skin thickness of determined by charge exchange reactions, Phys. Rev. C 74, 051303(R) (2006).
- G. Colò, U. Garg, and H. Sagawa, Symmetry energy from the nuclear collective motion: Constraints from dipole, quadrupole, monopole and spin-dipole resonances, Eur. Phys. J. A 50, 26 (2014).
- D. Frekers and M. Alanssari, Charge-exchange reactions and the quest for resolution, Eur. Phys. J. A 54, 177 (2018).
- R. G. T. Zegers, Excitation of isovector giant resonances through charge-exchange reactions, in Handbook of Nuclear Physics, edited by I. Tanihata, H. Toki, and T. Kajino (Springer Nature Singapore, Singapore, 2023), pp. 739–773.
- P. Kumar, S. Kaur, V. Thakur, R. Kumar, and S. K. Dhiman, A study of trends of neutron skin thickness and proton radii of mirror nuclei within the framework of covariant density functional theory, Mod. Phys. Lett. A 39, 2450022 (2024).
- M. Bentley and S. Lenzi, Coulomb energy differences between high-spin states in isobaric multiplets, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 59, 497 (2007).
- N. Auerbach, Coulomb effects in nuclear structure, Phys. Rep. 98, 273 (1983).
- S. Mizutori, J. Dobaczewski, G. A. Lalazissis, W. Nazarewicz, and P.-G. Reinhard, Nuclear skins and halos in the mean-field theory, Phys. Rev. C 61, 044326 (2000).
- J. K. P. Lee, Nuclei far from stability, in Topics in Nuclear Physics II: A Comprehensive Review of Recent Developments, edited by T. T. S. Kuo and S. S. M. Wong (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 1981), pp. 1026–1082.
- T. Frederico, A. Delfino, L. Tomio, and M. Yamashita, Universal aspects of light halo nuclei, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 67, 939 (2012).
- C. Signorini, M. Mazzocco, and D. Pierroutsakou, Low-energy reactions with halo nuclei, in Handbook of Nuclear Physics, edited by I. Tanihata, H. Toki, and T. Kajino (Springer Nature Singapore, Singapore, 2020), pp. 1–80.
- K. Kaneko, Y. Sun, T. Mizusaki, S. Tazaki, and S. Ghorui, Isospin-symmetry breaking in superallowed Fermi -decay due to isospin-nonconserving forces, Phys. Lett. B 773, 521 (2017).
- A. Petrovici, Shape coexistence and decay of within a beyond-mean-field approach, Phys. Rev. C 97, 024313 (2018).
- P. Choudhary and C. Qi, -decay properties of nuclei: Role of neutron-proton pairing and the shell model interpretation, Phys. Rev. C 111, 034316 (2025).
- A. Algora et al., Isospin symmetry breaking in the and mirror system, Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 162502 (2025).
- X. Roca-Maza and N. Paar, Nuclear equation of state from ground and collective excited state properties of nuclei, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 101, 96 (2018).
- K. Chatziioannou, H. T. Cromartie, S. Gandolfi, I. Tews, D. Radice, A. W. Steiner, and A. L. Watts, Neutron stars and the dense matter equation of state, Rev. Mod. Phys. (2025).
- H. Adhikary et al. (The NA61/SHINE Collaboration), Evidence of isospin-symmetry violation in high-energy collisions of atomic nuclei, Nat. Commun. 16, 2849 (2025).
- W. Brylinski, Large isospin symmetry violation in kaon production? EPJ Web Conf. 296, 12004 (2024).
- L. Pitaevskii and S. Stringari, Uncertainty principle, quantum fluctuations, and broken symmetries, J. Low Temp. Phys. 85, 377 (1991).
- L. Pitaevskii and S. Stringari, Uncertainty principle and off-diagonal long-range order in the fractional quantum Hall effect, Phys. Rev. B 47, 10915 (1993).
- Equation (1) can be derived (see Refs. [31, 54]) by applying the Schwartz inequality to the scalar product between the operators and defined by . This yields the inequality . Taking the square of this inequality and using the property , with and real and positive numbers, one finally obtains the main result (1).
- W. Heisenberg, Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik, Z. Phys. 43, 172 (1927).
- H. P. Robertson, The uncertainty principle, Phys. Rev. 34, 163 (1929).
- E. Schrodinger, About Heisenberg uncertainty relation, Proc. Prussian Acad. Sci., Phys.-Math. Sect. XIX, 296 (1930).
- F. Bagarello, Uncertainty relation for non-Hermitian operators, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 56, 425201 (2023).
- Differently from Eq. (1), the uncertainty inequalities considered in these works, however, contain, in the right-hand side of the inequality, terms depending on the anticommutator rather than on the commutator between the relevant operators and .
- P. C. Hohenberg, Existence of long-range order in one and two dimensions, Phys. Rev. 158, 383 (1967).
- N. D. Mermin and H. Wagner, Absence of ferromagnetism or antiferromagnetism in one- or two-dimensional isotropic Heisenberg models, Phys. Rev. Lett. 17, 1133 (1966).
- N. D. Mermin, Crystalline order in two dimensions, Phys. Rev. 176, 250 (1968).
- The Hohenberg-Mermin-Wagner theorem was actually derived using the Bogoliubov inequality (see Ref. [55]) , where is the temperature, which accounts for the effects of the thermal fluctuations and becomes useless at zero temperature.
- The sum should include also the states in the continuum.
- E. Lipparini and S. Stringari, Sum rules and giant resonances in nuclei, Phys. Rep. 175, 103 (1989).
- P. Danielewicz and J. Lee, Symmetry energy II: Isobaric analog states, Nucl. Phys. A 922, 1 (2014).
- Equation (2) can be equivalently derived employing the Hermitian choice and for the operators and in the usual formulation of the Heisenberg inequality for Hermitian operators and using the isospin relationships , , as well as the explicit assumption that the state , where we take the averages, is an eigenstate of .
- N. Auerbach, Excitation of giant resonances in pion charge exchange and the proton-neutron density distributions in nuclei, Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 913 (1982).
- M. Viviani, A. Kievsky, and S. Rosati, Calculation of the -particle ground state within the hyperspherical harmonic basis, Phys. Rev. C 71, 024006 (2005).
- J. A. Sheikh, J. Dobaczewski, P. Ring, L. M. Robledo, and C. Yannouleas, Symmetry restoration in mean-field approaches, J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 48, 123001 (2021).
- M. Pospelov and A. Ritz, Electric dipole moments as probes of new physics, Ann. Phys. 318, 119 (2005).
- C.-P. Liu and R. G. E. Timmermans, - and -odd two-nucleon interaction and the deuteron electric dipole moment, Phys. Rev. C 70, 055501 (2004).
- J. de Vries, E. Mereghetti, R. G. E. Timmermans, and U. van Kolck, and violating form factors of the deuteron, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 091804 (2011).
- N. Yamanaka and E. Hiyama, Electric dipole moment of the deuteron in the standard model with NN coupling, Nucl. Phys. A 963, 33 (2017).
- P. Froese and P. Navrátil, Ab initio calculations of electric dipole moments of light nuclei, Phys. Rev. C 104, 025502 (2021).
- L. Pitaevskii and S. Stringari, Bose-Einstein Condensation and Superfluidity (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016).
- H. Wagner, Long-wavelength excitations and the Goldstone theorem in many-particle systems with “broken symmetries”, Z. Phys. 195, 273 (1966).