Microscopic justification of the equal filling approximation

Abstract

The equal filling approximation, a procedure widely used in mean-field calculations to treat the dynamics of odd nuclei in a time-reversal invariant way, is justified as the consequence of a variational principle over an average energy functional. The ideas of statistical quantum mechanics are employed in the justification. As an illustration of the method, the ground and lowest-lying states of some octupole deformed radium isotopes are computed.