New Perspectives In Nuclear Structure

This seminar focuses on recent achievements and new goals of nuclear structure in both experiment and theory. Several topics at the forefront of current research in this field are covered by major experts. The main themes are: exotic nuclei; the present role and perspectives of the shell model; modes of excitation in deformed and superdeformed nuclei; and nuclear astrophysics.

This book provides a useful survey and assessment of the study of low-energy collective and single particle excitations of medium and heavy nuclei. An ideal resource for graduate students, the book covers both experimental and theoretical perspectives. The author's simple intuitive approach will help the reader to understand the empirical systematics as well as detailed model calculations, without recourse to complex--and often--confusing formalism.

"This seminar focuses on recent achievements and new goals of nuclear structure in both experiment and theory. Several topics at the forefront of current research in this field are covered by major experts. The main themes are: exotic nuclei; the present role and perspectives of the shell model; modes of excitation in deformed and superdeformed nuclei; and nuclear astrophysics."--Publisher's website.

This textbook on nuclear structure takes a unique approach to the topic, explaining nuclear structure by building on a few elementary physical ideas. Intricate topics such 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 data comparison shows the relevance of theoretical approaches. New to this edition are chapters on exotic nuclei and radioactive beams,and correlations of collective observables. Completely new discussions are given on isopin, the shell model, nature of collective vibrations, multi- phonon states, superdeformation, bandmixing, the geometric collective model, the fermei gas model, basic properties of simple nuclear potentials, the deuteron, etc.

This book provides an overview of the current research and future prospects in a variety of important areas in nuclear physics by leaders in their respective areas. Advances in both theory and experiments are covered. The topics included new insights into the fission process and the use of fission in the characterization of nuclear fuel waste. High spin spectroscopy studies of both proton and neutron rich nuclei are described. New and emerging areas covered include relativistic heavy ion physics at RHIC as it turns on in 1999, to new opportunities with radioactive ion beams at several laboratories, to prospects for new neutrino studies with the high intensity 1GeV proton beam from the Spallation Neutron source when it is completed in 2005. A major part of this book includes current and future research with stable and radioactive ion beams at the Holifield RIB facility and the performance and first results with the new generation recoil mass spectrometer at Holifield.

The present text grew out of a number of lecture courses for advanced under graduate and new graduate students in nuclear physics. They were given at summer schools in Leuven, Melbourne, and at study weeks for Dutch grad uate students which aimed to emphasize fundamental and topical aspects of nuclear physics. On occasion, part of the present text was presented to stu dents from a much wider field than just nuclear physics and also within a number of general physics colloquia, where, in addition to nuclear physicists, physicists from many other fields were present. In this respect, the intention is to present, in an amply illustrated form, the key quest ions that arise in nuclear physics. At the same time we try to show why a better understanding of the atomic nucleus is not only important in itself, but also yields essential insights into the many connections to other fields of physics. We thus concen trate on the unifying themes rather than addressing in great detail particular subfields of nuclear physics. The present project does not aim to be another comprehensive textbook on nuclear physics: Many of the detailed technical arguments that enter into the picture are not developed here as they would be in a more standard textbook. Instead they are presented using analogies, quite often with simple pictures and arguments that try to convey the general line of thinking and working in nuclear physics.

The aim of this publication is to give an account of recent advances and new perspectives in the study of nuclei far from stability both from the experimental and the theoretical points of view. Experimental studies of exotic nuclei are currently being performed in several laboratories and new facilities with high-intensity beams are either just completed, or approved and under construction or in their planning stages. The bulk of the contributions in this book is devoted to nuclear structure models and their derivation from the basic nucleon-nucleon interaction. Three models are extensively discussed: the shell model, the interacting boson model and the cluster model.In recent years, considerable advance has been made in ab initio theories of nuclei, especially of light nuclei.