Abstract
It would be useful to have an overview of some fundamental aspects of nuclei before discussing each subject in detail. In this connection, we briefly describe in this chapter the constituents and basic structure of atomic nuclei, properties of particles which are closely related to nuclear physics, the role of the four fundamental forces in nature in nuclear physics, nuclear species, the abundance of elements and the phase diagram of nuclear matter.
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Notes
- 1.
There exists an alternative definition, where proton and neutron are inverted such that \(|\mathrm {p}\rangle =|\frac{1}{2}\; \frac{1}{2}\rangle \), \(|\mathrm {n}\rangle =|\frac{1}{2}\; -\frac{1}{2}\rangle \). Since \(N \ge Z\) for most stable nuclei, we adopt the Definition (1.3) in this book.
- 2.
Precisely speaking, the experimental value of the magnetic moment of an electron is larger than the prediction of the Dirac theory by about 0.1%, and can be explained by quantum electrodynamics.
- 3.
It is Otto Stern who experimentally determined the magnetic moment of a proton for the first time. There remains an episode that Pauli visited Stern while he was conducting the experiment and denied the significance of the experiment based on the Dirac theory. Despite the criticism, Stern continued his experiment, and discovered the anomalous magnetic moment of a proton, and consequently was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1943.
- 4.
Recent experiments of the scattering of high-energy electrons, and also of polarized electrons , are shedding new lights on the intrinsic structure of nucleons. For example, it is getting uncovered that the electric and magnetic charge distributions are different.
- 5.
See also [4], where the relative abundance of even–even nuclear species with \(A \ge 50\) in the solar system is given.
References
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E.M. Burbidge, G.R. Burbidge, W.A. Fowler, F. Hoyle, Rev. Mod. Phys. 29, 547 (1957)
Aage Bohr, Ben R. Mottelson, Nuclear Structure, vol. I (Benjamin, New York, 1969)
The Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, The Frontiers of Nuclear Science – A Long Range Plan (2007). http://science.energy.gov/np/nsac/
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Takigawa, N., Washiyama, K. (2017). Introduction. In: Fundamentals of Nuclear Physics. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55378-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55378-6_1
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