The class will meet MW 1:30-320 pm in PAB B101
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.
Another introductory text which you might find useful: Introductory
Nuclear Physics, Kenneth S. Krane
This 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 rather wide range of phenomena. 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. In 1999, a German exchange student, Carsten Müller, took this course with me as an independent study and he created a latex document from part of my notes, which you can find it as a pdf file here. I did not have the chance to proofread it and this document does not have any figures.
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 or something else you might be comfortable with. In order to find the corresponding solution you might need to consult other sources of information, 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. To some extent this is similar to thermodynamics, where details of atom-atom interactions are hard to discern when one is looking at global properties.
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 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, which does not require understanding, but merely to follow mechanically mathematical rules), but the new concepts. As apparently a truly great physicist (Hans Bethe) 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.