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Multidimensionally-constrained covariant density functional theories --- nuclear shapes and potential energy surfaces

The intrinsic nuclear shapes deviating from a sphere not only manifest themselves in nuclear collective states but also play important roles in determining nuclear potential energy surfaces (PES's) and fission barriers. In order to describe microscopically and self-consistently nuclear shapes and PES's with as many shape degrees of freedom as possible included, we developed multidimensionally-constrained covariant density functional theories (MDC-CDFTs). In MDC-CDFTs, the axial symmetry and the reflection symmetry are both broken and all deformations characterized by $β_{λμ}$ with even $μ$ are considered. We have used the MDC-CDFTs to study PES's and fission barriers of actinides, the non-axial octupole $Y_{32}$ correlations in $N = 150$ isotones and shapes of hypernuclei. In this Review we will give briefly the formalism of MDC-CDFTs and present the applications to normal nuclei.