The introduction of B-spline basis sets in atomic structure calculations

We review some of the progress which has been achieved in calculations of atomic structure over the last few years, especially connected with the introduction of B-spline basis sets. The most important property of these basis sets is that they are effectively complete even in the case of a rather small set of basis functions. The possibilities for systematic calculations are discussed and applications to configuration interaction calculations as well as to calculations based on many-body perturbation theory are reviewed.