Structural changes in hot rotating transitional nuclei

The possibility of heating a nucleus to a finite temperature opens a new direction in the study of nuclear structure. The experimental analysis of giant dipole resonance (GDR) built on excited states have started to yield information about the shape transitions that takes place in such nuclei. This is also well known now that GDR cross-section curves are not that clear as we expect in rotating nuclei, because in hot rotating nuclei, thermal fluctuations may make the GDR curves a little complicated to interpret. Due to the finite number of degrees of freedom it is necessary to include thermal shape fluctuations in order to obtain good fits to experimental observables such as the giant dipole resonance built on hot nuclei. The main theoretical methods used to describe hot nuclei are taken from statistical mechanics. The Landau theory offers a natural frame work in which these fluctuations are introduced. We have applied this extended form of Landau theory to study the shape evolutions of hot rotating transitional nuclei, especially for the isotope of Neodymium such as ¹⁴⁶Nd