Relativistic density functional theory in nuclear physics

Over the past decades, the relativistic density functional theory has been greatly developed and widely applied to investigate a variety of nuclear phenomena. In this paper, we briefly review the concept of covariant density functional theory in nuclear physics with a few latest applications in describing nuclear ground-state and excitation properties as well as nuclear dynamics. Moreover, attempts to build a microscopic and universal density functional are also discussed in terms of the successful fully self-consistent relativistic Brueckner–Hartree–Fock calculations.