A study of shape diffusion in hot nuclei

We generalize a microscopic model of shape diffusion due to Bush, Bertsch and Brown in order to apply it to actinide nuclei. As they do, we completely neglect collective motion and treat the dynamics of shape changes as a diffusive process. We describe the nuclear shapes using a double-centered asymmetric oscillator. The diffusive dynamics of the model then results from the two-body residual transitions, based on the static Nilsson one-body orbitals, between different shapes of the underlying oscillator potential. We are studying the capability of the model to describe local properties, such as the shape diffusion coefficient, as well as large-scale ones, such as isomeric shape changes. (author)