The purpose of this project is to determine how the properties of atomic nuclei such as, for example, their shapes, depend upon their temperature and rotational velocity. Increasing temperature or rotational velocity can induce transitions between different nuclear shapes, i.e., prolate, oblate, spherical, etc. A single nucleus may also undergo transitions between a normal fluid phase and various kinds of superfluid phases, i.e., there may be correlated pairs containing two neutrons (or two protons) which have parallel or anti-parallel intrinsic spins, or there may be correlated pairs containing one neutron and one proton. Since hot nuclei are small systems, they should have significant fluctuations in (a) their shape, (b) the orientation of the shape relative to the rotation axis, and (c) the strength of their superfluity. The neutrons and protons occupy orbital, which are determined for each combination of temperature and rotational velocity.
