Description of deformed nuclei and their reactions in rare isotope physics

Abstract

Most of the nuclei produced by the r-process in a supernovae explosion and a neutron-star binary are thought to be more or less deformed. These, we need to explicitly take into account the deformation in the nuclear structure and its effects on relevant nuclear reactions in network calculations of the process. In particular, for medium and heavy N = Z nuclei, neutron-proton (np) pairing correlations, as well as deformations, are believed to play important roles in nuclear electro magnetic (EM) and weak transitions because the protons and the neutrons inside nuclei are usually assumed to occupy the same orbitals and the have maximum spatial overlaps. In this work, we address how to describe the deformed nuclei and discuss the effects of the deformations and the np-pairing correlations on the Gamow-Teller (GT) transition, which is a key transition in the thermal nuclear reactions in the cosmos.