NUCLEAR REACTION THEORY

Academic Year 2017/2018 - 1° Year - Curriculum NUCLEAR AND PARTICLE PHYSICS, Curriculum THEORETICAL PHYSICS and Curriculum NUCLEAR PHENOMENA AND THEIR APPLICATIONS
Teaching Staff: Maria COLONNA
Credit Value: 6
Scientific field: FIS/02 - Theoretical physics, mathematical models and methods
Taught classes: 35 hours
Laboratories: 15 hours
Term / Semester:

Learning Objectives

* Provide the basic elements of scattering theory applied to scattering between nucleons and to nuclear reactions.

* Introduce the student to the treatment and phenomenology of reactions between heavy ions at intermediate energies, from deep-inelastic reactions to the liquid-gas phase transition in nuclear matter.


Detailed Course Content

SCATTERING THEORY AND NUCLEAR REACTIONS - Elastic and inelastic reactions. Kinematics of nuclear reactions. Classical scattering theory. Qualitative characteristics of nuclear reactions. Quantum scattering theory. Description in partial waves: phase shifts and interference. Hard-Sphere Scattering. Low energy scattering. Bound states and scattering resonances. Scattering length, effective range and nuclear interaction. Born approximation for elastic and inelastic reactions. Double potential model and Born approximation in distorted waves (DWBA). Direct reactions: stripping, pick-up and knock-out. Description of the pick-up reaction (p, d). Impulse approximation. Eikonal approximation. Charge exchange reactions and connections with beta decay. Compound nucleus reactions. Empirical theory of optical potentials.

NUCLEAR COLLISIONS AT INTERMEDIATE ENERGY - Nuclear matter Equation of State (EoS). Isospin and symmetry energy. Nuclear dynamics in phase space. Wigner's transform and its properties. Semi-classical approximation. Boltzmann-Nordheim-Vlasov transport equation. Zero and First sound in nuclear matters. From incomplete fusion to multifragmentation: the spinodal mechanism for the dynamics of liquid-gas transition in nuclear matter. Deep-inelastic reactions and neck formation mechanism. Some notions about collective, radial, transverse and elliptic flows in heavy ion reactions.


Textbook Information

* J.J. Sakurai, Meccanica Quantistica Moderna, Ed. Zanichelli, 1990 - Capitolo 7

* G.R. Satchler, Introduction to Nuclear Reaction, Macmillian Education, 1990

* C.A. Bertulani, P. Danielewicz, Introduction to Nuclear Reactions, IOP Publishing, London, 2004