Zakopane 2026 Conference on Nuclear Physics

Time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) provides a fundamental framework for describing nuclear collective time-dependent processes, ranging from small-amplitude collective oscillations to large-amplitude phenomena such as fission and heavy-ion reactions. However, due to its mean-field nature, TDDFT accounts only for one-body dissipation effects and fails to describe the spreading widths of one-body observables.

To address this limitation, we develop the configuration-interaction time-dependent density functional theory (CI-TDDFT). This method expands the nuclear wave function in terms of a set of correlated time-dependent Slater determinants and rigorously follows the Dirac–Frenkel time-dependent variational principle. As a first application, we present an illustrative study of the excitation energies and widths of giant monopole resonances in 58Ni and 60Ni. Compared to TDDFT, CI-TDDFT provides a more accurate description of the widths of giant monopole resonances.