Microscopic Collective Enhancements in the Combinatorial Nuclear Level Density

The combinatorial level density model is a way to go beyond the statistical models of Fermi-gas type and includenuclear structure effects into the level density. We suggest a fully microscopic method to take into account collective enhancements within the combinatorialnuclear level density model starting from a deformed mean field potential. The collective effects include pairing interaction, rotational and vibrational states which are all treated microscopically and counted combinatorially whilekeeping track of the parity and angular momentum quantum numbers. The tracking of these quantum numbers lead to microscopic parity and angular momentum distributions. The model is compared to available experimental dataand the role of asymmetric parity distributions in astrophysical applications are discussed. With no adjustable parameters the model gives satisfactory results when compared to experimental data fromneutron resonances in the RIPL-2 database and rare-earth nuclei measured by the Oslo method.