Symmetry and Supersymmetry in Nuclear Pairing: Exact Solutions

Abstract

Pairing plays a crucial role in nuclear spectra and attempts to describe it has a long history in nuclear physics. The limiting case in which all single particle states are degenerate, but with different s-wave pairing strengths was only recently solved. In this strong coupling limit the nuclear pairing Hamiltonian also exhibits a supersymmetry. Another solution away from those limits, namely two non-degenerate single particle states with different pairing strengths, was also given. In this contribution these developments are summarized and difficulties with possible generalizations to more single particle states and d-wave pairing are discussed.