Pairing and seniority in an equations-of-motion approach to nuclear structure theory

In this paper, some achievements of an equations-of-motion approach to nuclear structure theory are discussed. As an introduction to the main subject, a brief survey of some early work is given. We then describe a formalism for treating the pairing-force problem and show, by numerical applications, that at the lowest order of approximation it provides an advantageous alternative to the BCS method. Finally, we discuss how to treat a general shell-model Hamiltonian within the framework of the seniority scheme. This makes it possible to further reduce seniority-truncated shell-model spaces, as is illustrated by examples.