Mean-Field and Pairing Properties of Exotic Nuclei: Exploring the Nuclear Landscape

In years to come, we shall see substantial progress in our understanding of nuclear structure - a rich and many-faceted field. An important element in this task will be to extend the study of nuclei into new domains. The journey to 'the limits' of isospin, angular momentum, and mass and charge is a quest for new and unexpected phenomena which await us in uncharted territories. What is extremely important from a theoretical point of view is that the new data are also expected to bring qualitatively new information about the effective nucleon-nucleon interaction and hence about the fundamental properties of the nucleonic many-body system. The main objective of this presentation is to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities for nuclear structure research with radioactive nuclear beams.