Nuclear Level Density of ¹⁶¹Dy in the Shell Model Monte Carlo Method

¹ Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Kadir Has University, Cibali 34083, Istanbul, Turkey
² Center for Theoretical Physics, Sloane Physics Laboratory, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
³ Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Chiba University, Inage, Chiba 263-8522, Japan

^a e-mail: cem.ozen@khas.edu.tr

Abstract

We extend the shell-model Monte Carlo applications to the rare-earth region to include the odd-even nucleus ¹⁶¹Dy. The projection on an odd number of particles leads to a sign problem at low temperatures making it impractical to extract the ground-state energy in direct calculations. We use level counting data at low energies and neutron resonance data to extract the shell model ground-state energy to good precision. We then calculate the level density of ¹⁶¹Dy and find it in very good agreement with the level density extracted from experimental data.