Nuclear Level Density of 161Dy in the Shell Model Monte Carlo Method

We extend the shell-model Monte Carlo applications to the rare-earth region to include the odd-even nucleus 161Dy. The projection on an odd number of particles leads to a sign problem at low temperatures making it impractical to extract the ground-state energy in direct calculations. We use level counting data at low energies and neutron resonance data to extract the shell model ground-state energy to good precision. We then calculate the level density of 161Dy and find it in very good agreement with the level density extracted from experimental data