Oxford Studies in Nuclear Physics – serie

The study of the low energy collective and single particle excitations of medium and heavy nuclei has undergone a rapid development in recent years. The aim of this text is to survey and assess this development, from both the experimental and theoretical perspectives, using an approach that emphasizes simple physical and intuitive pictures as an aid to understanding the empirical systematics as well as detailed model calculations. The approach is simple and intuitive and is well suited to the needs of graduate students in this area.

This book offers a comprehensive survey of basic elements of nuclear dynamics at low energies and discusses similarities to mesoscopic systems. It addresses systems with finite excitations of their internal degrees of freedom, so that their collective motion exhibits features typical for transport processes in small and isolated systems. The importance of quantum aspects is examined with respect to both the microscopic damping mechanism and the nature of the transport equations. The latter must account for the fact that the collective motion is self-sustained. This implies highly nonlinear couplings between internal and collective degrees of freedom --- different to assumptions made in treatments known in the literature. A critical discussion of the use of thermal concepts is presented. The book can be considered self-contained. It presents existing models, theories and theoretical tools, both from nuclear physics and other fields, which are relevant to an understanding of the observed physical phenomena.

The present textbook on nuclear structure takes a unique and complementary approach compared to existing texts on the topic. Avoiding complicated calculations and complex mathematical formalism, it explains nuclear structure by building on a few elementary physical ideas. Even such apparently intricate topics as shell model residual interactions, the Nilsson model, and the RPA analysis of collective vibrations are explained in a simple, intuitive way so that predictions can usually be made without calculations, essentially by inspection. Frequent comparison with data allows the relevance of theoretical approaches to be immediately evident. This edition includes new chapters on exotic nuclei and radioactive beams, and on correlations of collective observables. Completely new discussions are given of isospin, the shell model, nature of collective vibrations, multi-phonon states, superdeformation, bandmixing, geometric collective model, fermi gas model, basic properties of simple nuclear potentials, the deuteron, etc. With the amount of new material this new edition is essentially a new book.

The fundamental model of nuclear structure is the shell model. However, its application has been limited to light nuclei (up to the sd shell) or heavier nuclei with only a few valence nucleons outside closed shells. Its application beyond these limits has been prohibited so far by the large scale of the calculations involved. For the description of nuclei beyond the sd shell having several valence nucleons the introduction of collective models becomes necessary.The first comprehensive phenomenological model of nuclear structure was the geometric collective model of A. Bohr and B.R. Mottelson. An alternative approach was proposed in 1974 by A. Arima and F. Iachello, known as the Interacting Boson Model. This model, which uses group theoretical techniques in the description of nuclear collective properties, has the advantage of relative simplicity, allowing for detailed calculations of the properties of even medium and heavy nuclei which cannot be reached by the shell model yet. Several extensions and generalizations of the model have appeared over the last decade. Algebraic descriptions for the effects of clustering, permanent octupole deformation, and giant resonances have also been given. For the description of odd nuclei the Interacting Boson-Fermion Model has been introduced, and nuclear supersymmetries associated with it have been analysed.The present text is designed to provide physicists with an accessible introduction to the subject.

The study of nuclear moments parallels the development of nuclear physics as a whole. Thus it can prove an excellent pedagogical tool to acquaint oneself with the complexities and elegance of some of the most current and powerful nuclear models, and it is this that the authors have attempted in this book. Instead of presenting a compilation of theoretical calculations of nuclear moments, they have endeavoured to show to what extent nuclear moments can be used as a stringent test of current nuclear models and of their predictive power.

This book summarizes the enormous amount of material accumulated in the field of nuclear density functional theory over the last few decades. The goal of the theory is to provide a complete quantum-mechanical description and explanation of nuclear phenomena in terms of the local density distribution as a basic ingredient rather than the many-particle wavefunction. This leads to a considerable reduction in the mathematical complexity of nuclear many-body problems and to a great conceptual simplicity and visual clarity in its theoretical treatment.The authors develop the mathematical framework on which the theory is based and consider the associated approaches used to analyse experimental data in a variety of nuclei and nuclear processes with widely differing properties.

Giant resonances are collective excitations of the atomic nucleus, a typical quantum many-body system. The study of these fundamental modes has in many respects contributed to our understanding of the bulk behaviour of the nucleus and of the dynamics of non-equilibrium excitations. Although the phenomenon of giant resonances has been known for more than 50 years, a large amount of information has been obtained in the last 10 years. This book gives an up-to-date, comprehensive account of our present knowledge of giant resonances. It presents the experimental facts and the techniques used to obtain that information, describes how these facts fit into theoretical concepts and how this allows to determine various nuclear properties which are otherwise difficult to obtain. Included as an introduction is an overview of the main facts, a short history of how the field has developed in the course of time, and a discussion of future perspectives.

When a projectile and a target nucleus interact, creating a composite nucleus, the energy initially concentrated on a few nucleons spreads through the composite nucleus, which evolves towards a state of statistical equilibrium. During this equilibriation process, nucleons, or aggregates of nucleons, having considerable energy, may be ejected.This book gives a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the experimental and theoretical research that has been devoted, during the past 25 years, to the study of these pre-equilibrium reactions. After a historical introduction the theories of the reactions are described in detail. The multistep compound and multistep direct theories are considered separately, and all the theories are extensively compared with experimental data. A detailed account of compound-nucleus reactions is also included, together with a review of the theories of the nuclear-level densities that are needed to evaluate pre-equilibrium cross-sections. The main emphasis of the book is on nucleon-induced reactions, but those due to composite particles and heavy ions are also considered.

This book is a useful and accessible introduction to symmetry principles in particle physics. New ideas are explained in a way that throws considerable light on difficult concepts, such as Lie groups and their representations. This book begins with introdutions both to the types of symmetries known in physics and to group theory and representation theory. Successive chapters deal with the symmetric groups and their Young diagrams, braid groups, Lie groups and algebras, Cartan's classification of semi-simple groups, and the Lie groups most used in physics are treated in detail. Gauge groups are discussed, and applications to elementary particle physics and multiquark systems introduced throughout the book where appropriate. Many worked examples are also included. There is a growing interestinthe quatk structure of hadrons and in theories of particle interactions based on the principle of gauge symmetries. In this book the concepts of group theory are clearly explained and their applications to subnuclear physics brought up-to-date.

In this book the authors present the basic formalism to describe the electromagnetic field and its interaction with nuclear matter. Among the areas studied are pion production, polarization phenomena, and photonuclear reactions at intermediate energies. At a time when data will become available from many newly commissioned laboratories both in Europe and the USA, this book offers a timely presentation of the current understanding of the electromagnetic response of atomic nuclei. Its introductory approach and rich bibliography will make it invaluable to postgraduate students and researchers.

The need for this handbook is a direct consequence of a very large accumulation of new theoretical and experimental data on nucleur properties. The first five chapters are devoted to the presentation of experimental and theoretical aspects of the following topics: atomic masses of stable and radioactive nuclides; an intuitive way to understand the empirical trends of masses, based on a microscopic theory; Penning traps used as a modern mass spectrometer of high resolving power, accuracy and sensitivity; basic theoretical concepts and experimental techniques used to measure the nucleur shape parameters; new decay modes by hadron and cluster emission; the proton (p), and the beta-delayed particle emissions: neutron (n), 2n, 3n, 4n, p, 2p, 3p, d, t, etc.A series of tables are given in the second part of the handbook: fundamental constants and energy conversion factors; the decay modes of Gauge and Higgs bosons, leptons, quarks, mesons, baryons, and searches for free quarks, monoples, supersymmetries, compositeness, etc; selected alpha particle emitters; recommended data on y-ray and X-ray standards used for detector calibrations; a comprehensive table of all known nuclides (spin, parity, mass excess, half-life, or abundance for stable nuclei, and the main decay modes with the corresponding branching ratios).

The structure of light hadrons is dominated by the spontaneously broken chiral symmetry of the strongly interacting (QCD) vacuum. Low energy properties of light hadrons can be described in terms of quarks interacting with chiral fields. This book gives a comprehensive account of a large class of models which describe the restoration of chiral symmetry at high temperature and density, the effective interactions between quarks, mesons as solutions of the Beth-Salpeter equation, and baryons in terms of solitons which rotate in flavor space. An in-depth analysis of regularization is given, including regularization by delocalized fields. Symmetry conserving approximations are formulated using both path integral and Feynmann graph methods. The style is pedagogical and well suited to graduate and PhD students who want to learn the techniques used in present day research. It can also serve as a reference for research and lecture courses.

The main aim of this book is to provide a broad overview of nuclear physics in terms of both hadron-meson dynamics and quark-lepton dynamics. It covers topics such as elastic and inelastic scattering, spin-isospin responses and charge exchange reactions, giant resonances, nuclear clusters, nuclear physics with strange flavour, and others. All subjects are presented from the experimental point of view, and enough prerequisite material is included for the book to be accessible to graduate students. From this the reader is led through to discussions of the important questions of current research. H. Ejiri is Director of the Research Centre for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) at the University of Osaka, Japan. H. Toki is Professor of Physics at the University of Osaka, Japan.