Hartree-Fock Approach to Mass Formula

One of the problems of the semi-empirical mass formula is that functional forms differing only slightly, and fitted to the same data, will give significantly different extrapolations to the astrophysically interesting but experimentally inaccessible region far from the stability line; see, for example, the contribution of M. Arnould to this conference (1). A part of the difficulty stems from the so-called two-part macroscopic-microscopic approach, characterized by the separation into droplet-model (DM) and shell-model terms. Some synthesis of the two is desirable, and the Hartree-Fock (HF) method obviously suggests itself, since it takes shell-model effects into account automatically and self-consistently. Even better would be Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov (HFB).