Fundamentals of Nuclear Physics

Description

This book provides an introduction to nuclear physics. Research in nuclear physics covers a wide variety of subjects, and one can list many key words: nuclear structure and reactions of stable and unstable nuclei, fission and decay of a nucleus, extreme states such as the limits of existence and high-spin states, properties at high temperature and high density, hyper nuclei, neutron stars, and nucleosynthesis, among others. All of these are the subjects of nuclear physics. In addition to these rather static properties, nuclear reactions such as heavy-ion collisions introduce new aspects of research, i.e., dynamical properties of nuclei or reaction mechanisms, such as heavy-ion fusion reactions, dissipation phenomena and liquid–gas phase transition. Many of these phenomena can be understood from the point of view that a nucleus is a quantum many-body system of nucleons stabilized by nuclear force. On the other hand, phenomena at higher energies, driven by, e.g., high-energy heavy-ion collisions, require a different approach: the approach based on the quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The study of quark–gluon plasma and of the QCD phase diagram is representative and forms a large stream of current nuclear physics.