Nuclear pairing: basic phenomena revisited

I review the phenomena associated with pairing in nuclear physics, most prominently the ubiquitous presence of odd-even mass differences and the properties of the excitation spectra, very different for even-even and odd-A nuclei. There are also significant dynamical effects of pairing, visible in the inertias associated with nuclear rotation and large-amplitude shape deformation.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. This MS is a chapter in a review volume on nuclear pairing. The editors of the volume are R.A. Broglia and V. Zelevinsk