Seniority in quantum many-body systems
arXiv:1010.2415 · doi:10.1063/1.3537842
Abstract
The use of the seniority quantum number in many-body systems is reviewed. A brief summary is given of its introduction by Racah in the context of atomic spectroscopy. Several extensions of Racah's original idea are discussed: seniority for identical nucleons in a single-$j$ shell, its extension to the case of many, non-degenerate $j$ shells and to systems with neutrons and protons. To illustrate its usefulness to this day, a recent application of seniority is presented in Bose--Einstein condensates of atoms with spin.
16 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in the Proceedings of The American Institute of Physics