Statistical theory of deformation distributions in nuclear spectra

Understand

The dependence of the nuclear level density on intrinsic deformation is an important input to dynamical nuclear processes such as fission.

• Auxiliary-field Monte Carlo (AFMC) method is a powerful method for computing nuclear level densities.
• However, the statistical distribution of intrinsic shapes is not readily accessible due to the formulation of AFMC in a spherical configuration-interaction shell-model approach.
• Instead, theory of deformation up to now has largely relied on a mean-field approximation which breaks rotational symmetry.