Nucleon-phonon coupling in hot, rapidly rotating nuclei (I)

The particle-vibration coupling formalism is generalized to deal with hot, strongly rotating nuclei. In this way the basis to carry out a microscopic description of the structure of compound nuclei has been developed, in particular the calculation of the effective mass of nucleons close to the Fermi energy. As a consequence, it will be possible to provide a realistic estimate of the nuclear level density as a function of rotational frequency and temperature, a quantity which is among the key ingredients needed in the study of the evolution of the cooling of the compound nucleus through nucleon and γ-decay.