UW, Warsaw

Nuclear chiral rotation studied with self-consistent methods

Recently a new type of rotational bands has been observed, suggesting the spontanous chiral symmetry breaking throughout those bands. Calculations within particle-rotor models and phenomenological mean field with the tilted-axis-cranking confirm this conjecture. The next step is to invlolve selfconsistent methods like the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock that we use. We developed one of the first HF codes that can break sufficiently enough symmetries to address the chiral rotation. We present our first results. Two conclusions come from our colculations, namely that the chiral structures can only appear above some critical rotational frequency and that the time-odd terms of the Skyrme mean field prevent the chiral symmetry breaking. These are intriguing points that require further investigations.