Identical bands at normal deformation: Necessity of going beyond the mean-field approach

The validity of BCS theory has been questioned because the appearance of normally deformed identical bands in odd and even nuclei seems to contradict the conventional understanding of the blocking effect. This problem is examined with the projected shell model (PSM), which projects good angular momentum states and includes many-body correlations in both deformation and pairing channels. Satisfactory reproduction of identical band data by the PSM suggests that it may be necessary to go beyond the mean field to obtain a quantitative account of identical bands. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society.}