We discuss the development of an angular-momentum-conserving variant of the Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) method for use in large-scale shell-model calculations of atomic nuclei and report a first application of the method to the ground state of ${}^{56}\mathrm{Ni}$ and improved results for ${}^{48}\mathrm{Cr}$. In both cases, we see a high level of agreement with the exact results. A comparison of the two shows a dramatic reduction in the fraction of the space required to achieve accuracy as the size of the problem grows.

• Received 8 August 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.78.041303