Density matrix renormalization group and the nuclear shell model

We describe the use of the density matrix renormalization group method as a means of approximately solving large-scale nuclear shell-model problems. We focus on an angular-momentum-conserving variant of the method and report test results for the nucleus Cr-48. The calculation is able to reproduce both the ground-state energy and the energy of the first excited state, by diagonalizing matrices much smaller than those of the full shell model.