Shell model for heavy nuclei and its application in nuclear astrophysics

Abstract

Performing shell model calculations for heavy nuclei is a long-standing problem in nuclear physics. The shell model truncation in the configuration space is an unavoidable step. The Projected Shell Model (PSM) truncates the space under the guidance of the deformed mean-field solutions. This implies that the PSM uses a novel and efficient way to bridge the two conventional methods: the deformed mean-field approximations, which are widely applied to heavy nuclei but able to describe the physics only in the intrinsic frame, and the spherical shell model diagonalization method, which is most fundamental but feasible only for small systems. We discuss the basic philosophy in construction of the PSM (or generally PSM-like) approach. Several examples from the PSM calculations are presented. Astrophysical applications are emphasized.

14 pages, 5 figures, invited talk at International Conference on Nuclear Structure Physics, Shanghai, June 2006

References in corpus (6)

• The Shell Model as Unified View of Nuclear Structure
• Enhanced Stability of Superheavy Nuclei due to High-Spin Isomerism
• Nuclear structure of 178Hf related to the spin-16, 31-year isomer
• Shape transition and oblate-prolate coexistence in N=Z fpg-shell nuclei
• Nuclear structure of the exotic mass region along the rp process path
• Extracting the rp-process from X-ray burst light curves