Spin symmetry in the Dirac sea derived from the bare nucleon–nucleon interaction

The spin symmetry in the Dirac sea has been investigated with relativistic Brueckner–Hartree–Fock theory using the bare nucleon–nucleon interaction. Taking the nucleus ¹⁶O as an example and comparing the theoretical results with the data, the definition of the single-particle potential in the Dirac sea is studied in detail. It is found that if the single-particle states in the Dirac sea are treated as occupied states, the ground state properties are in better agreement with experimental data. Moreover, in this case, the spin symmetry in the Dirac sea is better conserved and it is more consistent with the findings using phenomenological relativistic density functionals.