PARITY DEPENDENCE OF THE NUCLEAR-LEVEL DENSITY

We derive a new method to calculate the parity distribution of excited levels in nuclei. We compare our results with the predictions of the Ericson formula in the framework of the equidistant-spacing model. We show that the Ericson formula may, in some cases, badly fail to reproduce the exact parity distribution computed by a direct counting method. On the contrary, our model agrees very well with the exact counting, showing sequences of positive- and negative-parity dominated regions in the level density.