Onset of chaos in rapidly rotating nuclei

Abstract

The onset of chaos is investigated for excited, rapidly rotating nuclei, utilizing a schematic two-body residual interaction added to the cranked Nilsson Hamiltonian. Dynamical effects at various degrees of mixing between regularity and chaos are studied in terms of fragmentation of the collective rotational strength. It is found that the onset of chaos is connected to a saturation of the average standard deviation of the rotational strength function. Still, the rotational-damping width may exhibit motional narrowing in the chaotic regime.