New approach to large-scale nuclear structure calculations - art. no. 061303

A new approach to large-scale nuclear structure calculations, based on the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG), is described. The method is te sted in the context of a problem involving many identical nucleons constrai ned to move in a single large-j shell and interacting via a pairing plus qu adrupole interaction. In cases in which exact diagonalization of the Hamilt onian is possible, the method is able to reproduce the exact results for th e ground-state energy and the energies of low-lying excited states with ext reme precision. Results are also presented for a model problem in which exa ct solution is not feasible.