Specific features and symmetries for magnetic and chiral bands in nuclei

Magnetic and chiral bands have been a hot subject for more than twenty years. Therefore, quite large volumes of experimental data as well as theoretical descriptions have been accumulated. Although some of the formalisms are not so easy to handle, the results agree impressively well with the data. The objective of this paper is to review the actual status of both experimental and theoretical investigations. Aiming at making this material accessible to a large variety of readers, including young students and researchers, I gave some details on the schematic models which are able to unveil the main features of chirality in nuclei. Also, since most formalisms use a rigid triaxial rotor for the nuclear system's core, I devoted some space to the semi-classical description of the rigid triaxial as well as of the tilted triaxial rotor. In order to answer the question whether the chiral phenomenon is spread over the whole nuclear chart and whether it is specific only to a certain type of nuclei, odd–odd, odd–even or even–even, the current results in the mass regions of $A\sim 60,80,100,130,180,200$ are briefly described for all kinds of odd/even–odd/even systems. The chiral geometry is a sufficient condition for a system of proton-particle, neutron-hole and a triaxial rotor to have the electromagnetic properties of chiral bands. In order to prove that such geometry is not unique for generating magnetic bands with chiral features, I presented a mechanism for a new type of chiral bands. One tries to underline the fact that this rapidly developing field is very successful in pushing forward nuclear structure studies.