Test of isospin symmetry along the N=Z line

Abstract

The study of isospin symmetry in nuclei as a function of angular momentum has now become established as a very powerful tool to understand nuclear properties in rotating nuclei. These studies have become feasible in the last decade due to recent experimental developments in the identification of proton-rich nuclei produced with very low cross sections. Contemporaneously, state-of-the-art shell-model codes have been produced for the description of these data. The synergy between theory and experiment for the study of energy differences of mirror and isobaric analogue nuclei in the mass region between A ∼30 and ∼60 has allowed the investigation of the evolution of the nuclear wave functions with increasing spin. The alignment process, changes of the nuclear shape and the intrinsic configuration, together with the evidence of isospinnon-conserving terms of the nuclear interaction are examples of the type of phenomena that can be studied from the analysis of Coulomb energy differences. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.