National Academies Press: OpenBook
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×

Nuclear Physics

The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars

Committee on Nuclear Physics

Board on Physics and Astronomy

Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications

National Research Council

NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Washington, D.C.
1999

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce Alberts is president of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. William A. Wulf is president of the National Academy of Engineering.

The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an advisor to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth I. Shine is president of the Institute of Medicine.

The National research Council was established by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce Alberts and Dr. William A. Wulf are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.

This project was supported by the Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-FG02-96ER40957 and the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY-9515524. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the agencies that provided support for this project.

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number 98-89539

International Standard Book Number 0-309-06276-4

Additional copies of this report are available from:
National Academy Press
(http://www.nap.edu) 2101 Constitution Ave., NW, Box 285 Washington, D.C. 20055 800-624-6242 202-334-3313 (in the Washington metropolitan area)

Board on Physics and Astronomy

National Research Council, HA 562

2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W.

Washington, DC 20418

Copyright 1999 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×

Committee On Nuclear Physics

JOHN P. SCHIFFER,

Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago,

Chair

SAM M. AUSTIN,

Michigan State University

GORDON A. BAYM,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

THOMAS W. DONNELLY,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

BRADLEY FILIPPONE,

California Institute of Technology

STUART FREEDMAN,

University of California at Berkeley

WICK C. HAXTON,

University of Washington

WALTER F. HENNING,

Argonne National Laboratory

NATHAN ISGUR,

Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

BARBARA JACAK,

State University of New York at Stony Brook

WITOLD NAZAREWICZ,

University of Tennessee at Knoxville

VIJAY R. PANDHARIPANDE,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PETER PAUL,*

State University of New York at Stony Brook

STEVEN E. VIGDOR,

Indiana University

DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director

ROBERT L. RIEMER, Senior Program Officer

*  

Currently at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×

Board On Physics And Astronomy

ROBERT C. DYNES,

University of California at San Diego,

Chair

ROBERT C. RICHARDSON,

Cornell University,

Vice Chair

STEVEN CHU,

Stanford University

VAL FITCH,

Princeton University

IVAR GIAEVER,

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

RICHARD HAZELTINE,

University of Texas at Austin

JOHN P. HUCHRA,

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

JOHN C. MATHER,

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

R.G. HAMISH ROBERTSON,

University of Washington

JOSEPH H. TAYLOR, JR.,

Princeton University

KATHLEEN C. TAYLOR,

General Motors Research and Development Center

J. ANTHONY TYSON,

Lucent Technologies

GEORGE WHITESIDES,

Harvard University

DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director

ROBERT L. RIEMER, Associate Director

KEVIN D. AYLESWORTH, Program Officer

NATASHA CASEY, Senior Administrative Associate

GRACE WANG, Project Assistant

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×

Commission On Physical Sciences, Mathematics, And Applications

PETER M. BANKS,

ERIM International, Inc.,

Co-chair

W. CARL LINEBERGER,

University of Colorado,

Co-chair

WILLIAM BROWDER,

Princeton University

LAWRENCE D. BROWN,

University of Pennsylvania

MARSHALL H. COHEN,

California Institute of Technology

RONALD G. DOUGLAS,

Texas A&M University

JOHN E. ESTES,

University of California at Santa Barbara

JERRY P. GOLLUB,

Haverford College

MARTHA P. HAYNES,

Cornell University

JOHN L. HENNESSY,

Stanford University

CAROL M. JANTZEN,

Westinghouse Savannah River Company

PAUL KAMINSKI,

Technovation, Inc.

KENNETH H. KELLER,

University of Minnesota

MARGARET G. KIVELSON,

University of California at Los Angeles

DANIEL KLEPPNER,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

JOHN R. KREICK,

Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Company

MARSHA I. LESTER,

University of Pennsylvania

M. ELISABETH PATÉ-CORNELL,

Stanford University

NICHOLAS P. SAMIOS,

Brookhaven National Laboratory

CHANG-LIN TIEN,

University of California at Berkeley

NORMAN METZGER, Executive Director

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×

Preface

The Committee on Nuclear Physics was established by the Board on Physics and Astronomy as part of its decadal survey series, Physics in a New Era. The committee met four times over the course of a year. It heard from program managers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and solicited input from the nuclear physics community through the American Physical Society's Division of Nuclear Physics. A set of peer readers who were asked by the committee to read the draft report (J. Friar, G. Garvey, K. Gelbke, E. Henley, B. Holstein, and R. Holt) provided valuable perspectives, and their comments had an influence on the report. The comments of the reviewers of the report (see page ix) also provided useful input. The committee would like to thank both groups for their time and help. In addition, the list of individuals who helped with material for the report in a variety of ways is too long to enumerate, and the committee wishes to express its gratitude for this assistance.

As part of the physics survey, the overall objective of the study was to help the general public, the government agencies concerned with the support of science, Congress, and the physics community to envision the future of this field within the nation's overall physics effort.

The report of the committee is in the context of previous planning for the field and follows the reports of the 1972 Physics Survey's Nuclear Physics Panel, chaired by J. Weneser, and the 1986 Physics Survey's Nuclear Physics Panel, chaired by J. Cerny, as well as the planning of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC), a joint advisory committee of the NSF and DOE. In particular, the committee drew on the 1996 report Nuclear Science: A Long Range Plan,

Page viii Cite
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×

prepared by NSAC (available from the Division of Nuclear Physics, Office of Science, DOE, or the Nuclear Science Section, Physics Division, NSF). The NSAC Long Range Plans represent a wide community involvement in shaping the field.

The committee would like to acknowledge the assistance of Donald C. Shapero, director, Board on Physics and Astronomy, and Robert L. Riemer, senior program officer. The committee would especially like to acknowledge the late David Schramm, who started the present review and discussed the committee's task at its first meeting. His unique enthusiasm for physics and profound interest and many contributions to the nuclear physics of astrophysical phenomena are missed in nuclear physics as indeed in all of physics.

The committee would like to acknowledge the support provided by grants from NSF's Physics Division and DOE's Office of Science.

JOHN P. SCHIFFER, CHAIR

COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR PHYSICS

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×

Acknowledgment of Reviewers

This report has been reviewed by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council's (NRC's) Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the authors and the NRC in making the published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The contents of the review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their participation in the review of this report:

Gary Adams, Rensselaer Polytechnic University,

Felix Boehm, California Institute of Technology,

Stanley J. Brodsky, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,

Richard Casten, Yale University,

Ernest M. Henley, University of Washington,

Jerry Garrett, Oak Ridge National Laboratory,

J. Ross Macdonald, University of North Carolina,

Peter Parker, Yale University,

R.G. Hamish Robertson, University of Washington, and

James P. Vary, Iowa State University.

Although the individuals listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, responsibility for the final content of this report rests solely with the authoring committee and the NRC.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×

3

 

THE STRUCTURE OF NUCLEI

 

47

   

Introduction

 

47

   

Nuclear Forces and Simple Nuclei

 

49

   

Advances and Challenges in Understanding Light Nuclei

 

51

   

Nuclear Forces and Complex Nuclei

 

58

   

The Shell Model of Nuclei

 

58

   

Mean Field Methods

 

60

   

Limits of Nuclear Stability

 

61

   

The Quest for Superheavy Elements

 

61

   

Toward the Limits in Neutron-to-Proton Ratio

 

64

   

Limits of Angular Momentum

 

67

   

Nuclear Matter

 

77

   

Outlook

 

78

4

 

MATTER AT EXTREME DENSITIES

 

80

   

Introduction

 

80

   

Ultrarelativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

 

83

   

Stopping

 

86

   

Evolution of Collisions

 

87

   

Hot Dense Initial State

 

91

   

Hadronic Rescattering and Freezeout

 

92

   

Thermal Description of the Final State

 

93

   

Signatures of Quark-Gluon Plasma Formation

 

94

   

Chiral Symmetry

 

99

   

Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider

 

99

   

Experiments at RHIC

 

100

   

Outlook

 

102

5

 

THE NUCLEAR PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE

 

104

   

Introduction: Challenges for the Field

 

104

   

The Solar Neutrino Problem

 

105

   

The Big Bang, the Quark-Gluon Plasma, and the Origin of the Elements

 

112

   

The Supernova Mechanism

 

115

   

Measuring Stellar Nuclear Reactions in the Laboratory

 

118

   

Neutron Stars

 

122

   

Particle Properties from Nuclear Astrophysics

 

126

   

Outlook

 

127

6

 

SYMMETRY TESTS IN NUCLEAR PHYSICS

 

128

   

Introduction: Priorities and Challenges

 

128

   

The Standard Model

 

129

   

Testing Symmetries

 

132

Page xiii Cite
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
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Spatial Reflection Symmetry

 

134

   

Time-Reversal Symmetry

 

136

   

Precision Measurements of Standard Model Parameters

 

138

   

The Search for Neutrino Mass

 

141

   

The Weak Interaction Within the Nuclear Environment

 

146

   

Exotic Particle Searches, Rare Decays, and Nuclear Physics

 

147

   

Outlook

 

148

7

 

THE TOOLS OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS

 

150

   

Introduction

 

150

   

Accelerators

 

151

   

Historical Perspective

 

151

   

Accelerator Research and Development

 

155

   

Instrumentation

 

158

   

Examples of New Detector Systems

 

158

   

Ion and Atom Traps

 

158

   

Exploring the Structure of Exotic Nuclei

 

159

   

Detectors for the Quark Structure of Matter

 

163

   

Detectors for the Frontier of High-Energy Density

 

164

   

Detection Schemes for Fundamental Symmetries and Underground Laboratories

 

166

   

Computers in Nuclear Physics

 

169

   

Relativistic Heavy-Ion Data Storage and Retrieval

 

169

   

Quantum Monte Carlo Simulations of Nuclei

 

170

   

Computer Simulations of Supernovae

 

170

   

Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics

 

170

   

Outlook

 

171

8

 

NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND SOCIETY

 

172

   

Introduction

 

172

   

Human Health

 

174

   

Radiation Therapy for Cancer

 

174

   

Cancer Therapy with Protons

 

174

   

Cancer Therapy with Neutrons and Heavy Ions

 

175

   

Diagnostic Imaging

 

175

   

SPECT and PET Imaging

 

176

   

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging

 

176

   

Trace-Isotope Analysis

 

179

   

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry

 

179

   

Environmental Applications

 

180

   

Impact on Industry

 

183

   

Nuclear Analysis and Testing

 

183

   

Testing with Particle Beams

 

183

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1999. Nuclear Physics: The Core of Matter, The Fuel of Stars. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6288.
×

Nuclear Physics

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Dramatic progress has been made in all branches of physics since the National Research Council's 1986 decadal survey of the field. The Physics in a New Era series explores these advances and looks ahead to future goals. The series includes assessments of the major subfields and reports on several smaller subfields, and preparation has begun on an overview volume on the unity of physics, its relationships to other fields, and its contributions to national needs.

Nuclear Physics is the latest volume of the series. The book describes current activity in understanding nuclear structure and symmetries, the behavior of matter at extreme densities, the role of nuclear physics in astrophysics and cosmology, and the instrumentation and facilities used by the field. It makes recommendations on the resources needed for experimental and theoretical advances in the coming decade.

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