Present Status of Realistic Shell-Model Calculations

The present paper is comprised of two parts. First, we give a brief survey of the theoretical framework for microscopic nuclear structure calculations starting from a free nucleon-nucleon potential. Then, we present some selected results of a comprehensive study of nuclei near doubly closed shells. In all these shell-model calculations we have made use of realistic effective interactions derived from the Bonn-A nucleon-nucleon potential by means of a G-matrix folded-diagram method. We show that this kind of calculation yields a very good agreement with experiment for all the nuclei considered. This leads to the conclusion that realistic effective interactions are now able to describe with quantitative accuracy the properties of complex nuclei.