Excitation Of The Giant Resonances With Muons And Electrons And Nucleon Emission In Electron Scattering

Electron Scattering from Complex Nuclei, Part B is a three-chapter text that explores the excitation of the nucleus to bound levels and the nucleus breakup through particle emission from continuum states. The first chapter discusses the inelastic scattering to nuclear levels, the giant resonances, the concepts of radiative corrections, and the phase shift analysis for inelastic scattering. The subsequent chapter concerns the quasi-elastic continuum and the observations of the nuclear decay products. The last chapter presents special topics on electron scattering, such as dispersion and exchange corrections, sum rules, and isospin effects. Physicists, researchers, and graduate students will find this book invaluable.

This is the most recent and complete review on giant resonances in nuclei. It includes electric as well as magnetic collective states and a detailed discussion on the excitation mechanisms and the decay properties is given.

Giant resonances are collective excitations of the atomic nucleus, a typical quantum many-body system. The study of these fundamental modes has in many respects contributed to our understanding of the bulk behavior of the nucleus and of the dynamics of non-equilibrium excitations. Although the phenomenon of giant resonances has been known for more than 50 years, a large amount of information has been obtained in the last 10 years. This book gives an up-to-date, comprehensive account of our present knowledge of giant resonances. It presents the experimental facts and the techniques used to obtain that information, describes how these facts fit into theoretical concepts and how this allows to determine various nuclear properties which are otherwise difficult to obtain. Included as an introduction is an overview of the main facts, a short history of how the field has developed in the course of time, and a discussion of future perspectives.

Often, a new area of science grows at the confines between recognised subject divisions, drawing upon techniques and intellectual perspectives from a diversity of fields. Such growth can remain unnoticed at first, until a characteristic fami ly of effects, described by appropriate key words, has developed, at which point a distinct subject is born. Such is very much the case with atomic 'giant resonances'. For a start, their name itself was borrowed from the field of nuclear collective resonances. The energy range in which they occur, at the juncture of the extreme UV and the soft X-rays, remains to this day a meeting point of two different experimental techniques: the grating and the crystal spectrometer. The impetus of synchrotron spectroscopy also played a large part in developing novel methods, described by many acronyms, which are used to study 'giant resonances' today. Finally, although we have described them as 'atomic' to differentiate them from their counterparts in Nuclear Physics, their occurrence on atomic sites does not inhibit their existence in molecules and solids. In fact, 'giant resonances' provide a new unifying theme, cutting accross some of the traditional scientific boundaries. After much separate development, the spectroscopies of the atom in various environments can meet afresh around this theme of common interest. Centrifugal barrier effects and 'giant resonances' proper emerged almost simultaneously in the late 1960's from two widely separated areas of physics, namely the study of free atoms and of condensed matter.

The first of two volumes presenting an overview of the important research areas in which Professor H. Überall has done his life's work and constitutes a festschrift for this distinguished physicist. Each chapter is intended to serve as a bridge between advanced textbooks and the most recent research literature, thereby providing a valuable reference for active researchers as well as for graduate students.