Benchmarking transition strengths in angular-momentum-projected Hartree-Fock

Angular momentum-projected Hartree-Fock (PHF) is one of the most straightforward beyond-mean-field methods. Recent comparisons against full configuration-interaction (FCI) calculations have shown that for medium-light nuclides, PHF, especially when one includes any shape coexistence, is surprisingly good at capturing low-lying spectra, not only for even-Z, even-N, but also for odd-A and odd-odd nuclides. Preliminary work on M1 and E2 transitions in the sd-shell using PHF transition densities often produced surprisingly good approximations to full shell-model diagonalization results. We report on extending this investigation to heavier nuclei and larger model spaces.