Recent results in quantum chaos and its applications to atomic nuclei

Abstract

A survey of chaotic dynamics in atomic nuclei is presented, using on the one hand standard statistics of quantum chaos studies, and on the other a new approach based on time series analysis methods. The study of shell-model spectra in the pf shell shows that nuclear chaos is strongly isopin dependent and increases with excitation energy. On the other hand, it is found that chaotic quantum systems exhibit 1/f noise and regular systems exhibit 1/f(2) behaviour. It is shown that the time series approach can be used to calculate quite accurately the fraction of missing levels and the existence of mixed symmetries in experimental level spectra.