The effect of pairing correlations on nuclear transition rates

An attempt is made to study the influence of pairing correlations in some γ and β decay processes, using “projected” wave functions that are eigenfunctions of the number operator, and that have extremely large overlaps with the exact solutions of the pairing Hamiltonian. It is not much more difficult to obtain accurate numerical results with the new wave functions than it is with the usual Bardeen-Copper-Schrieffer wave functions. The results …