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 text is designed to provide physicists with an accessible introduction to the interacting boson model, an approach to nuclear structure that was first proposed in 1974, with several important extensions and generalizations appearing over the last decade. The value of this model lies in the fact that the traditional shell model of nuclear structure is limited in its application to light nuclei or heavier nuclei with only a few valence nucleons outside closed shells. Beyond these limits, the model requires prohibitively large-scale calculations. For this reason, the introduction of...

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 behavior 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...

This book is a useful and accessible introduction to symmetry principles in particle physics. Concepts of group theory are clearly explained and their applications to subnuclear physics brought up to date. The book begins with introductions to both 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...

This handbook on basic nuclear properties and particle decay modes is the result of new theoretical and experimental data on nuclear properties; its aim is to combine the newest developments from advanced research laboratories with background information on such topics as masses, deformations, and energy conversion factors. These findings, along with the most recently updated tables, make this a valuable reference for researchers, practitioners, and students of nuclear and particle physics who are interested in basic nuclear properties.

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 solitions which rotate in flavor space. An in-depth analysis of regularization is given,...

A well-designed introduction to experimental and theoretical nuclear physics that will help graduate students and researchers alike bridge the gap between what is known about nucleon-meson nuclear physics and what will be learned from future research in quark-lepton nuclear physics. The book describes nuclear physics in terms of hadron-meson dynamics and then in terms of quark-lepton dynamics. Chapters cover such topics as elastic and inelastic scattering; spin-isospin responses and charge exchange reactions; giant resonances; nuclear clusters; and nuclear physics with strange flavor.
The...

The authors decided to write this book when they could find no other texts for a course on non-relativistic nuclear reactions. It combines a thorough theoretical approach with applications to recent experimental results. The main formalisms used to describe nuclear reactions are explained clearly and coherently, and the reader is led from basic laws to the final formulae used to calculate measurable quantities. Topics include quantal and semi-classical potential scattering; the formal theory of nuclear reactions, including the theory of the optical model; and direct reactions and...

This book covers the structure and dynamics of atomic nuclei in terms of nucleons, pions, and quarks, all within a unified treatment of the nuclear response to an electromagnetic probe. The basic formalism is presented to describe the electromagnetic field and its interaction with nuclear matter for both real and virtual photons. Nuclear response is then analyzed in terms of structure functions in the case of inclusive and semi-inclusive inelastic electron scattering. The discussion covers pion production and one- or two-nucleon emission and compares the results with available data. The...