Self-consistent single-particle approximation to nuclear state densities at high excitation energy

We compute nuclear state densities for a number of magic and semimagic nuclei in the usual saddle point approximation within the framework of the grand-canonical formalism in an energy range where residual two-body interactions and collective effects can reasonably be neglected. The single-particle states used in the calculations are generated in a relativistic self-consistent mean field at finite temperature based on widely adopted effective interactions. Observed limits and possible improvements of the adopted formalism are discussed.