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Nuclear Level Densities: From Empirical Models to Microscopic Methods

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Compound-Nuclear Reactions

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Physics ((SPPHY,volume 254))

Abstract

The level density is among the most important statistical nuclear properties. It appears in Fermi’s golden rule for transition rates and is an important input to the Hauser–Feshbach theory of compound nucleus reactions. We discuss empirical models of level densities and summarize the main experimental methods used to determine them. The microscopic calculation of level densities in the presence of correlations is a challenging many-body problem. We review recent microscopic approaches to calculate level densities. Mean-field and combinatorial methods have been applied across the nuclear chart, but often need to be augmented with empirical collective enhancement factors. The moment method and the auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFMC) method are formulated in the context of the configuration-interaction shell model approach, and include correlations beyond the mean-field approximation.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank G.F. Bertsch, M. Bonett-Matiz, L. Fang, P. Fanto, C.N. Gilbreth, S. Liu, A. Mukherjee, M.T. Mustonen, H. Nakada, and C. Özen for their collaboration on parts of the work reviewed above. This work was supported in part by the U.S. DOE grants Nos. DE-SC0019521 and DE-FG02-91ER40608. The research presented here used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. We also thank the Yale Center for Research Computing for guidance and for use of the research computing infrastructure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Theoretical Physics, Sloane Physics Laboratory, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Y. Alhassid

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  1. Y. Alhassid
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Correspondence to Y. Alhassid .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA

    Jutta Escher

  2. Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Yoram Alhassid

  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Lee A. Bernstein

  4. National Nuclear Data Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA

    David Brown

  5. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Carla Fröhlich

  6. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

    Patrick Talou

  7. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA

    Walid Younes

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Alhassid, Y. (2021). Nuclear Level Densities: From Empirical Models to Microscopic Methods. In: Escher, J., et al. Compound-Nuclear Reactions . Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 254. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58082-7_12

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