Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Nuclear Physics and Radiation Detectors
Nuclear Physics and Radiation Detectors
Course Overview
Global Properties of Nuclei
http://www.physics.gla.ac.uk/~kaiser/
Lecture Topics
1 basic properties of nuclei
spectroscopy and scattering
2,3,4 the nucleus
nuclear models, geometric shapes of nuclei
electron scattering
5 nucleon-nucleon interactions
the deuteron, nucleon-nucleon scattering, Yukawa potential
6,7,8 the nucleon
elastic scattering, deep inelastic scattering
form factors, structure functions
quark model, mesons and baryons, hadron physics
9 reactors and bombs
10 modern topics in nuclear physics
P4H 424: Nuclear Physics Lecture 1 – p.5/21
Books and Reference Material
The books that I mainly used in preparing the present course are
K.Krane, Introductory Nuclear Physics, Wiley
B.Povh, K.Rith, C.Scholz, F.Zetsche, Particles and Nuclei,
Springer
In addition I’m using the lectures of two colleagues, D.Ireland
(Glasgow) and M.Dueren (Giessen) as input. I’m also using the
web as a source of pictures etc.
As this is the first time I’m teaching the present course, the material
will develop from week to week. The slides will be made available
on the web from week to week as well. If you find typos (and there
will be some) or mistakes (dito) please let me know.
As this is not a basic course, I will assume that some basics are
already known. If I assume too much, or too little, please also let
me know.
P4H 424: Nuclear Physics Lecture 1 – p.6/21
The Nucleus
[eV]
Atom Atoms consist of a nucleus and an
electron shell.
3.0
Nucleus A nucleus consists of nucleons:
0
protons and neutrons. As the mass
-10
Na-Atom of a nucleon is about 2000 times
10 m [MeV]
Nucleus
the mass of an electron the nucleus
carries practically all the mass of an
3.0
atom.
A nucleon consists of 3 quarks (and
Protons
0
and Neutrons 208
Pb Nucl. gluons).
-14
10 m
[GeV] 1 fm (femtometer, Fermi) = 10 m
Proton
is the typical length scale of nuclear
physics
0.3
Quark 1 MeV (Mega-electron volt) =
0
1.602 J is the typical energy
-15 Proton
10 m scale of nuclear physics
P4H 424: Nuclear Physics Lecture 1 – p.7/21
Nuclear Theory and Experiment
Atomic physics has a single consistent theory -
Quantumelectrodynamics (QED). This is unfortunately not true
for nuclear physics: There is a fundamental theory of the
strong interaction - Quantumchromodynamics (QCD) - but it
describes the interactions between quarks, not nucleons.
The energies involved in nuclear decays are of the order of
1-10 MeV, less than 0.1 % of the mass of the nucleus. As a
result non-relativistic QM can be used to describe the nucleus.
This is not true for the study of the structure of the nucleon,
where the incident beam energy in a scattering experiment
may be 100 times the proton mass equivalent.
Both nuclei and nucleons are complex systems involving many
constituents. The theories and models that describe them are
therefore often phenomenological in nature and nuclear
physics is rather led by experiment than by theory.
by the de-Broglie-wavelength of the particles. Nuclear
radii can be measured with electron beams of about 10 eV,
proton radii with 10 eV.
The term ’spectroscopy’ is used to describe those experiments
which determine the decay products of excited states. In this
way, one can study the properties of the excited states as well
as the interactions between the constituents. ’States’ can be
different nuclids or in hadron physics different mesons or
baryons. The energies required to produce excited states are
similar to those for scattering experiments.
P4H 424: Nuclear Physics Lecture 1 – p.9/21
Nuclids
X is the chemical symbol of the element
Z is the atomic number, giving the number of protons in the
nucleus (and electrons in the shell)
N is the number of neutrons
A = Z + N is the mass number
Nuclids with the same atomic number Z are called isotopes,
same A isobars, same N isotones (isos (gr.) - the same).
A−1 A+1
decays can easily be
n
A
X Z XN−1 Z X N Z XN+1 connected with movement in
A−2 A−1
p
A β+
the chart, e.g. -decay
W W W W corresponds to two-left,
Z−1 N−1 Z−1 N Z−1 N+1
A−4 α two-down.
V V V V this allows to visualise entire
Z−2 N−2
decay chains in an effective
N fashion
it also allows to visualise
other properties, e.g. lifetime
or date of first detection
P4H 424: Nuclear Physics Lecture 1 – p.11/21
Nuclid Chart - Lifetime
In a magnetic field the radius of curvature is proportional to the
momentum:
Ion source
Detector
of the C nuclid:
For comparison, the proton mass is 938.272 MeV/c .
P4H 424: Nuclear Physics Lecture 1 – p.16/21
Nuclear Abundance
One application of
nuclear mass
spectroscopy is the study
of relative isotope
abundances in the solar
Abundance[Si=106] system. (see figure,
normalised to Si).
They are generally the
same throughout the
solar system.
deuterium and helium :
fusion in the first minutes
after the big bang, nuclei
up to Fe : stars, heavier
Mass number A nuclei in supernovae.
energy between a nucleus and it’s constituent Z protons
and N neutrons:
where is the atomic mass of . The binding energy is
With the masses generally given in atomic mass units, it is
convenient to include the conversion factor in , thus
= 931.481 MeV/u.
at . This suggests that light nuclei, below can gain
energy by fusion into heavier nuclei. Heavy nuclei above
can release energy by fission into lighter nuclei.
This is already the basic argument why only nuclids up to
can be formed in normal stars.
More about the shape of this curve a little later, when we study
the semi-empirical mass formula.