UW, Warsaw

Mean-field studies of exotic nuclei

Proposed and existing experimental facilities that aim at intense studies of nuclei far from stability, pose new challenges and new opportunities for nuclear structure theory. Predictions of properties of exotic nuclei cannot be reliably made by simple extrapolations of theoretical approaches that provide a fair description od stable systems. On the one hand, one has to improve this description from fair to good, and on the other hand, one must use approaches that are firmly rooted in the underlying properties of nucleon-nucleon (effective) interactions. Recent advances in the effective-field-theory understanding of NN and NNN forces is one of the available avenues leading to a better microscopic description of heavy nuclear systems. On the way, we have to revisit standard methods and forces used up to now in nuclear structure, and attempt achieving better quantitative description of well-known spectroscopic properties of nuclei. This may give us information on possible/required extensions of effective nuclear forces that are in use since already some time. In particular, rigorous application of the local-density-approximation methods gives us hints on the type of the density dependence of nuclear forces that can be better suited for asymmetric systems.