Speaker
Dr
Stéphane GORIELY
Description
Important effort has been devoted in the last decades to measure reaction cross
sections. These measurements are fundamental to put the nuclear astrophysics models
on a sound basis. However, despite such effort, many nuclear applications, and most
particularly nuclear astrophysics, still require the use of theoretical predictions
to estimate experimentally unknown cross sections. Most of the nuclear ingredients
in the calculations of reaction cross sections need to be extrapolated in an energy
or/and mass domain out of reach of laboratory simulations. In addition, some
applications often involve a large number of unstable nuclei, so that only global
approaches can be used. For these reasons, when the nuclear ingredients to the
reaction models cannot be determined from experimental data, it is highly
recommended to consider preferentially microscopic or semi-microscopic global
predictions based on sound and reliable nuclear models which, in turn, can compete
with more phenomenological highly-parametrized models in the reproduction of
experimental data.
The latest developments and improvements made in the prediction of ground-state
properties, nuclear level densities, gamma-ray strength functions and fission
properties within global microscopic models are reviewed. The direct as well as
indirect experimental data available to test these models are discussed. It is shown
to what extent previous and future experiments can bring new constraints or insights
on the existing models.
