Physics 560, Theoretical Nuclear Physics, Fall 2002

Instructor: Aurel Bulgac

   TA: Yongle Yu

The class will meet MWF 12:30 - 1:20 pm in PAA A212

This course web page will likely change continously throughout the quarter and you are
advised to make a bookmark and consult it periodically.


Textbook:  Introductory Nuclear Physics, by S.M. Wong,  second edition, Wiley 1998.

The first edition was published in 1990 by Prentice Hall and is out of print. The core of the book is the same in both editions. In the second edition the author has added three new chapters and made some changes to the rest of the chapters. Several copies of both the first and second editions of the book are on reserve in the Physics Library.

You might find some useful information concerning this course on the 1997 homepage of a similar course I taught in 1997-1998.  At that time the Theoretical Nuclear Physics course was taught as a three quarter course. While the first quarter of the present course will likely be very similar to the one I taught in 1997, the material to be covered during the second quarter is not entirely decided.


This first part of the theoretical nuclear physics course will cover basic properties of nuclei and their semi-qualitative description.  At the end of the course you should have a pretty good idea about the basic properties of nuclei and of some range of phenomena studied mostly until 1980 or so in this field. We will not be able to cover the entire field, but hopefully this introductory course will help you later on to find your way in nuclear literature.

I shall follow my lecture notes, a copy of which I shall make available either in the physics library and/or on the bookshelves outside my office.  I might however decide to append them with additional material. When, and if, that hapens, you will be advised. In 1999, a German exchange student, Carsten Mueller, who took this course with me as an independent study, created a latex document from part of my notes. I shall make it available to you as a post-script file here. I did not have the  chance to proofread it and this document does not have any figures (there are quite a number of figures in my hand-written notes).

From time to time I shall assign various problems as homework. In these assignments you will be asked to find an analytical, numerical or some other type of solution to a particular nuclear physics problem. In some cases you will have to use one or more of the following:  fortran, matlab  and mathematica. In order to find the corresponding solution you might  need to consult other sources of informations, either textbooks or original scientific articles.  The solutions of these problems will be subsequently presented by students to the rest of the class in a seminar-like atmosphere. The students are strongly advised to participate in the general discussion.

The final grade will reflect my (subjective) opinion about the level at which you have mastered and understood the material presented.  There will be no final exam and you will be graded only on your homework assignments or/and presentations.

I shall not present the material in quite the same sequence as in the textbook. The textbook starts with a presentation of the one and two-nucleon problems. Nuclear physics, however, is mostly about many nucleon problems and as in other physics fields (e.g. statistical physics) many details of the NN interactions are not particularly  relevant if one intends to study the properties of relatively large systems.

The material in the textbook and in my notes are presented at approximately the same level of difficulty, which I would characterize as medium for a graduate course. This course will emphasize the qualitative understanding of nuclear phenomena and during this first quarter I shall not make a special effort to introduce sophisticated theoretical methods. The most difficult part of a new physics subject is not the formal part, the mathematical formalism, but the new concepts.  As apparently a truly great physicist once said (I quote this from my memory of what someone else told me): The formalism is like your underwear, you do not show it in public. This of course is a gross exaggeration, but as with many such general statements, it contains a grain of truth. The rigor of mathematical formalism too often appeals to especially young minds and the mathematical argument is unconsciously taken for understanding physics. Unless one can explain physical phenomena in simple terms, most likely there is little or no  understanding. One should be able in most cases to obtain back of the envelope estimates of various observables, even in cases when originally the corresponding result has been obtained with some great intellectual effort and perhaps a new formalism.


Problems: 1 , 2 , 3 , F1 , 4
 



I shall put here various little programs you might find useful to play with.

Files with extension m, such as square_box.m are matlab programs. You can run them on university computers (mead fro example), and it should be available as well in room B241 on both windows and linux computers. Simply put the file in some directory, at the prompt type matlab and after matlab starts at matlab promp type square_box. You can also open at the same time the file in matlab editor and run it from that window. That might be convenient, since I have some comments in the file, describing various steps and the meaning of various operations.