Nuclear Physics and Radiation Detectors

P4H 424 Course, Candlemas 2004

Nuclear Physics Lecture 1
Dr Ralf Kaiser
Room 514, Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Glasgow

r.kaiser@physics.gla.ac.uk

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Summary
Course Overview
Global Properties of Nuclei
http://www.physics.gla.ac.uk/~kaiser/

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Nuclear Physics
Historically, nuclear physics can be seen as the child of
chemistry and atomic physics and in turn as the parent of
particle physics and one of the parents of medical physics.
When hearing the word nuclear most people will think of two
things: nuclear bombs (aka WMDs) and nuclear reactors. Both
are not exactly popular these days.
Thanks to bombs and reactors nuclear physics was probably
the part of science with the biggest impact on politics in the
20th century. Just think of the entire cold war. The Manhattan
project was probably the most high-prole science project of
the 20th century, with a large number of future Nobel-prize
winners involved.
In cultural relevance it is possibly rivalled by the moon-landing another technological spin-off of World-War II, and in
every-day-relevance by electronics.

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Nuclear Physics
Todays mainstream nuclear physics research has very little to do
with bombs and reactors. Current research topics include:
Hadron structure: the structure of the nucleon and of hadrons
in general.
Hadron spectroscopy: the search for glueballs, hybrids and
multiquark states. (Maybe youve heard about the recent
evidence for pentaquarks.)
Heavy ion physics: quark-gluon plasma, a new phase of matter
Nuclear Astrophysics: understanding stars, super-novae etc.
Still, it is necessary to understand the main results of classical
nuclear physics before one enters current research and certain
topics therefore have to be part of a nuclear physics course.

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Course Overview
Lecture
1
2,3,4

5
6,7,8

9
10

Topics
basic properties of nuclei
spectroscopy and scattering
the nucleus
nuclear models, geometric shapes of nuclei
electron scattering
nucleon-nucleon interactions
the deuteron, nucleon-nucleon scattering, Yukawa potential
the nucleon
elastic scattering, deep inelastic scattering
form factors, structure functions
quark model, mesons and baryons, hadron physics
reactors and bombs
modern topics in nuclear physics

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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 Im using the lectures of two colleagues, D.Ireland
(Glasgow) and M.Dueren (Giessen) as input. Im also using the
web as a source of pictures etc.
As this is the rst time Im 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 nd 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.

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The Nucleus
[eV]

Atoms consist of a nucleus and an

electron shell.

Atom

3.0

Nucleus

0
-10

10

Na-Atom
m

[MeV]
Nucleus

3.0
Protons
and Neutrons
m

Pb Nucl.

10

208

A nucleon consists of 3 quarks (and

gluons).
1 fm (femtometer, Fermi) = 10
m
is the typical length scale of nuclear
physics

[GeV]

-14

A nucleus consists of nucleons:

protons and neutrons. As the mass
of a nucleon is about 2000 times
the mass of an electron the nucleus
carries practically all the mass of an
atom.

Proton

0.3

1 MeV (Mega-electron volt) =

1.602
J is the typical energy
scale of nuclear physics

Quark

-15

10

0
Proton

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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.

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Nuclear Physics Experiments

Nuclear physics experiments can be classied as scattering or
spectroscopic experiments (the same holds true for hadron
physics).

In a scattering experiment, a beam of particles with known

energy and momentum is directed towards the object to be
studied (the target). The achievable resolution is determined
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.

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Nuclids

A nuclid is a specic combination of a number of protons and

neutrons.

is the complete symbol for a nuclid, but the information is

redundant and
is sufcient.
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).

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Nuclid Chart
nuclids can be put onto a
chart, not unlike a periodic
table for nuclear physics
Z

typically the chart plots

Z vs N

A+2

A+1

the different radioactive

decays can easily be
connected with movement in
the chart, e.g. -decay
corresponds to two-left,
two-down.

Z+1 N1 Z+1 N Z+1 N+1

A+1
A
Z XN1 Z X N
ZX
N+1
p
A2
A1
A +

A1

Z1 N1 Z1 N Z1 N+1

A4

Z2 N2

this allows to visualise entire

decay chains in an effective
fashion
it also allows to visualise
other properties, e.g. lifetime
or date of rst detection

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Nuclid Chart - Lifetime

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Nuclid Chart - Historical

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Nuclear Masses
Atomic masses (actually, ionic masses) can be determined
with high precision using mass spectrometers. Because the
electron mass is know very precisely this allows to determine
the mass of the concerned nucleus.
Mass spectrometers use a combination of electric and
magnetic elds to measure the Q/M ratio and thus the mass M.




In an electric eld the radius of curvature of the ion trajectory is

proportional to the kinetic energy:

In a magnetic eld the radius of curvature is proportional to the

momentum:

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Nuclear Masses - Mass Spectrometer

Ion source

Detector

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Nuclear Masses
By careful design of the magnetic elds, ions with identical
Q/M ratios are focused at a point at the end of the
spectrometer, where a detector can be placed.
Modern mass spectrometers often use a more complicated but
also more elegant arrangement of magnetic quadrupoles and
oscillating electric elds (quadrupole mass spectrometer).











is therefore dened as 1/12 of the mass

An atomic mass unit

of the C nuclid:

The mass reference is not the proton or the hydrogen atom,

but the isotope C. Carbon and its many compounds are
always present in a spectrometer and are well suited for a
mass calibration.

For comparison, the proton mass is 938.272 MeV/c .

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Nuclear Abundance

Abundance[Si=106]

One application of
nuclear mass
spectroscopy is the study
of relative isotope
abundances in the solar
system. (see gure,
normalised to Si).
They are generally the
same throughout the
solar system.

deuterium and helium :

fusion in the rst minutes
after the big bang, nuclei
up to Fe : stars, heavier
nuclei in supernovae.

Mass number A

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Nuclear Abundance - Example

Counts

Top: Mass spectrum of

xenon isotopes, found in
a 2.7 billion year old
gneiss sample from a drill
core on the Kola
peninsula.
Bottom: xenon isotope
spectrum as they occur in
the atmosphere.

Mass number A

The Xe in the gneiss

were produced by spontaneous ssion of uranium.
(K.Schfer, MPI Heidelberg).

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Nuclear Binding Energy

The binding energy of a nucleus is the difference in in mass

and its constituent Z protons
energy between a nucleus
and N neutrons:

where
is the atomic mass of
. The binding energy is
determined from atomic masses, since they can be measured
much more precisely than nuclear masses.




Grouping the Z proton and electron masses into Z neutral

hydrogen atoms, we can re-write this as:

With the masses generally given in atomic mass units, it is

convenient to include the conversion factor in , thus
= 931.481 MeV/u.

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Nuclear Binding Energy

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Nuclear Binding Energy

The rst obvious feature of the B/A vs A plot is that it the curve
is relatively constant, with the exception of very light nuclei.
The average binding energy of most nuclei is about 8 MeV per
nucleon.

This is already the basic argument why only nuclids up to

can be formed in normal stars.

Second, the curve reaches a peak around A=60, to be precise

at
. This suggests that light nuclei, below
can gain
energy by fusion into heavier nuclei. Heavy nuclei above
can release energy by ssion into lighter nuclei.

More about the shape of this curve a little later, when we study
the semi-empirical mass formula.


Last, but not least,

and
appear to be off the curve. We
will get back to this when we study the shell model.

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