Chaos {\sl vs} Thermalization in the Nuclear Shell Model

Abstract

Generic signatures of quantum chaos found in realistic shell model calculations are compared with thermal statistical equilibrium. We show the similarity of the informational entropy of individual eigenfunctions in the mean field basis to the thermodynamical entropy found from the level density. Mean occupation numbers of single-particle orbitals agree with the Fermi-Dirac distribution despite the strong nucleon interaction.

Comments: RevTeX, 12 pages and 4 figures available upon request