An Advanced Course In Computational Nuclear Physics

This graduate-level text collects and synthesizes a series of ten lectures on the nuclear quantum many-body problem. Starting from our current understanding of the underlying forces, it presents recent advances within the field of lattice quantum chromodynamics before going on to discuss effective field theories, central many-body methods like Monte Carlo methods, coupled cluster theories, the similarity renormalization group approach, Green’s function methods and large-scale diagonalization approaches. Algorithmic and computational advances show particular promise for breakthroughs in predictive power, including proper error estimates, a better understanding of the underlying effective degrees of freedom and of the respective forces at play. Enabled by recent improvements in theoretical, experimental and numerical techniques, the state-of-the art applications considered in this volume span the entire range, from our smallest components – quarks and gluons as the mediators of the strong force – to the computation of the equation of state for neutron star matter. The lectures presented provide an in-depth exposition of the underlying theoretical and algorithmic approaches as well details of the numerical implementation of the methods discussed. Several also include links to numerical software and benchmark calculations, which readers can use to develop their own programs for tackling challenging nuclear many-body problems.

The ?eld of nuclear physics is entering the 21st century in an interesting and exciting way. On the one hand, it is changing qualitatively since new experim- tal developments allow us to direct radioactive and other exotic probes to target nuclei as well as to sparko? extremely energetic nuclear collisions. In parallel, detector systems are of an impressive sophistication. It is di?cult to envisage all the discoveries that will be made in the near future. On the other hand, the app- cations of nuclear science and technology are broadening the limits in medicine, industry, art, archaeology, and the environmental sciences, etc. This implies that the public perception of our ?eld is changing, smoothly but drastically, in c- trast to former times where nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants were the dominant applications perceived by citizens. Both aspects, scienti?c dynamism and popular recognition, should lead the ?eld to an unexpected revival. One of the consequences of the former could be that many brilliant students consider nuclear physics as an excellent ?eld in which to acquire professional expertise. Therefore, one of the challenges of the international nuclear physics community is to try to make the ?eld attractive. That means simply being pedagogic and enthusiastic. Thus, as organisers of an already established summer school, our contribution was to put an emphasis in this session on pedagogy and enthusiasm.

The ?eld of nuclear physics is entering the 21st century in an interesting and exciting way. On the one hand, it is changing qualitatively since new experim- tal developments allow us to direct radioactive and other exotic probes to target nuclei as well as to sparko? extremely energetic nuclear collisions. In parallel, detector systems are of an impressive sophistication. It is di?cult to envisage all the discoveries that will be made in the near future. On the other hand, the app- cations of nuclear science and technology are broadening the limits in medicine, industry, art, archaeology, and the environmental sciences, etc. This implies that the public perception of our ?eld is changing, smoothly but drastically, in c- trast to former times where nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants were the dominant applications perceived by citizens. Both aspects, scienti?c dynamism and popular recognition, should lead the ?eld to an unexpected revival. One of the consequences of the former could be that many brilliant students consider nuclear physics as an excellent ?eld in which to acquire professional expertise. Therefore, one of the challenges of the international nuclear physics community is to try to make the ?eld attractive. That means simply being pedagogic and enthusiastic. Thus, as organisers of an already established summer school, our contribution was to put an emphasis in this session on pedagogy and enthusiasm.

The ?eld of nuclear physics is entering the 21st century in an interesting and exciting way. On the one hand, it is changing qualitatively since new experim- tal developments allow us to direct radioactive and other exotic probes to target nuclei as well as to sparko? extremely energetic nuclear collisions. In parallel, detector systems are of an impressive sophistication. It is di?cult to envisage all the discoveries that will be made in the near future. On the other hand, the app- cations of nuclear science and technology are broadening the limits in medicine, industry, art, archaeology, and the environmental sciences, etc. This implies that the public perception of our ?eld is changing, smoothly but drastically, in c- trast to former times where nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants were the dominant applications perceived by citizens. Both aspects, scienti?c dynamism and popular recognition, should lead the ?eld to an unexpected revival. One of the consequences of the former could be that many brilliant students consider nuclear physics as an excellent ?eld in which to acquire professional expertise. Therefore, one of the challenges of the international nuclear physics community is to try to make the ?eld attractive. That means simply being pedagogic and enthusiastic. Thus, as organisers of an already established summer school, our contribution was to put an emphasis in this session on pedagogy and enthusiasm.

This textbook is a unique and ambitious primer of nuclear physics, which introduces recent theoretical and experimental progresses starting from basics in fundamental quantum mechanics. The highlight is to offer an overview of nuclear structure phenomena relevant to recent key findings such as unstable halo nuclei, superheavy elements, neutron stars, nucleosynthesis, the standard model, lattice quantum chromodynamics (LQCD), and chiral effective theory. An additional attraction is that general properties of nuclei are comprehensively explained from both the theoretical and experimental viewpoints. The book begins with the conceptual and mathematical basics of quantum mechanics, and goes into the main point of nuclear physics – nuclear structure, radioactive ion beam physics, and nuclear reactions. The last chapters devote interdisciplinary topics in association with astrophysics and particle physics. A number of illustrations and exercises with complete solutions are given. Each chapter is comprehensively written starting from fundamentals to gradually reach modern aspects of nuclear physics with the objective to provide an effective description of the cutting edge in the field.

A variety of standard problems in theoretical nuclear-structure physics is addressed by the well-documented computer codes presented in this book. Most of these codes were available up to now only through personal contact. The subject matter ranges from microscopic models (the shell, Skyrme-Hartree-Fock, and cranked Nilsson models) through collective excitations (RPA, IBA, and geometric model) to the relativistic impulse approximation, three-body calculations, variational Monte Carlo methods, and electron scattering. The 5 1/4'' high-density floppy disk that comes with the book contains the FORTRAN codes of the problems that are tackled in each of the ten chapters. In the text, the precise theoretical foundations and motivations of each model or method are discussed together with the numerical methods employed. Instructions for the use of each code, and how to adapt them to local compilers and/or operating systems if necessary, are included.