Status of Experimental Tests of the IBA

This review will survey the status of experimental tests of the IBA including a discussion of both IBA-1 and IBA-2. Overall, to date, the IBA has enjoyed enormous success, both in individual nuclei and as a general scheme for the unified treatment of entire regions. As the number of tests of the model has grown recently, the first significant discrepancies have also appeared and will be discussed in some detail. The review is limited to even-even nuclei. Even so, it is impossible to discuss all relevant work within the short space available. The growing pace of experimental work in this area is attested by the rather different contents of this review and an earlier one1 this year: the reader is, therefore, also referred to that review where it was possible to treat some of the relatively smaller number of tests in more detail and also for its survey of tests of the IBA for odd mass nuclei.