Rapidly rotating nuclei as Riemann ellipsoids (Q1104145)

The Riemann ellipsoid equations of motion are proven to constitute a Hamiltonian dynamical system. The phase space is a co-adjoint orbit of the Lie group GCM(3), which is generated by the linear group Gl(2,\({\mathbb{R}})\) and the inertia tensor. The gcm(3) Casimir invariant is shown to be the square of the conserved Kelvin circulation. The co- adjoint orbits are the reduced phase spaces of Riemann ellipsoids for which conservation of circulation has been exploited fully. Equilibrium solutions are reported for the nuclear potential formed by the sum of the attractive surface energy and the repulsive Coulomb potential. Among the solutions obtained are the rigidly rotating Maclaurin spheroids and Jacobi ellipsoids, irrotational fluids, collective and noncollective prolate spheroids, Riemann sequences indexed by the rigidity, bounding self-adjoint sequences, and ellipsoids for which the angular momentum and circulation are not aligned with a principal axis. Quantum Riemann ellipsoids are constructed using the method of geometric quantization. In a follow-up paper, the stability of the equilibrium solutions will be reported.