Covariant density functional theory with spectroscopic properties in nuclear physics

Covariant density functional theory (CDFT) is extremely useful for the investigation of ground state properties of nuclei all over the periodic table. For the calculations of nuclear spectra the generator coordinate method (GCM) is used to perform configuration mixing of angular-momentum projected wave functions generated by constrained self-consistent relativistic mean-field calculations. In this way correlations related to the restoration of broken symmetries and to fluctuations of collective variables are included. Because of the numerical complexity of such calculations, additional approximations are implemented to derive, in a fully microscopic way, the parameters of a five-dimensional collective Bohr Hamiltonian for vibrational and rotational degrees of freedom. This allows the calculations of nuclear spectra and it provides a microscopic theory of quantum phase transitions in finite nuclei.