2.

7 Nuclear reactions
The nuclear reactions described so far are those which occur for a nucleus in isolation, or
at most embedded in its atomic shells. There is an enormous amount of nuclear reactions
possible, once multiple nuclei come into the game. Such reactions proceed by the
collisions of two (or more) participants, which then either form a single product, or split
again in two or more reaction products, which may be quite different from the initial ones.
Such nuclear reactions play singular important roles. Probably the most important
is the burning of the sun, and thus the possibility for life on earth. This is entirely due
to nuclear reactions, and nuclear physics can described these processes at least
qualitatively, if not yet in all details quantitatively perfectly. Nuclear reactions play also
a central role in nuclear reactors, but are also of central importance in the creation of
isotopes for the purpose of medical and industrial uses.
An important aside is that nuclear reactions depend quite strongly on the initial
con-ditions, especially the amount of energies carried by the involved particles.
Especially, for some amount of energy a process may occur very often, while it is
extremely rare for other parameters. Especially for processes occurring in
astrophysical bodies the re-quired parameters may be very hard to realize in an
experiment, and thus often results are indirect.

2.7.1 Fission

The best known case of nuclear reaction is nuclear fission. In general, nuclear fission
is essentially that a nucleus breaks up. This can happen in some cases as a decay,
but also if the nucleus is interacting with some other particle. A simple example is that
of 7Be, which when shot at with a proton will decay into two helium nuclei. In this
case, for a brief moment, a compound nucleus may be formed, 8Be, which however is
highly unstable. At higher energies, the interaction may also create more fragments,
e. g. a helium nucleus, a tritium nucleus, and the proton.
Fission targets do not need to be stable nuclei themselves. E. g. the fission of an
uranium nucleus after being hit by a neutron is probably the most well-known example of
nuclear fission. It is also the practically most important one, as it is the one employed in
most nuclear power plants. This is also a process where the parameter dependence
plays an important role, as this will occur efficiently only for neutrons and uranium of
very small relative speed. The speed is about the same as those obtained from
thermal motion, and therefore the neutrons, which are usually the ones shot at the
uranium nuclei, are also called thermal neutrons.

2.7.2 Fusion

Fission is encountered as α-decay or spontaneous fission already as a property of a

single nucleus. More interesting is a process which cannot occur on its own: Fusion.
Fusion is a process where two nuclei are brought together, and form a single nucleus
afterwards. This requires to first overcome the Coulomb barrier due to the electromagnetic
repulsion between the two initial nuclei. This can be achieved by propelling one at the other,
though the energy must be suitably chosen to avoid a fission process.
The probably simplest, but at the same time most important, fusion process is the
fusion of two deuterium nuclei into a 4He nucleus. This is a process which is occurring
within suns abundantly. In the same manner, all heavier elements have been created
out of essentially only hydrogen during both cosmological and stellar evolution.
However, a fusion process may yield also unstable nuclei, which can then decay. It is
also possible to fuse more than two nuclei at the same time. E. g., the process
34He→12C is of fun-damental importance for the solar burning. However, even under
optimal condition the efficiency of such n-body processes is so small that it is almost
impossible to realize them in experiments.
A fusion process may also be directly accompanied by a fission process. An example
is the fusion of two hydrogen nuclei, protons, to a deuterium nuclei, the first and most
important step of stellar burning as well as the early nuclear cosmological evolution, the
nucleosynthesis. In this case, the protons are brought together, in stars just by thermal
motion. Since two protons do not form a stable system, it could be expected that this will
not produce a stable result. However, the amount of energy available usually permits to
perform a β+-decay, i. e. one of the protons is transformed into a neutron under emission
of a positron and a neutrino, thus forming stable deuterium nucleus, 2H.

2.7.3 Exchange reactions

Another possibility are exchange reactions. E. g. 2H+3He→p+4He plays a role in

stellar reactions. Here, the exchanged particle is a neutron, and both nuclei still exist
afterwards, though modified.
 Such exchange reactions can also be mediated by other particles, and sometimes
much more complicated objects than a simple nucleon. It is also possible that almost all
of the nucleons are afterwards concentrated in one of the initial particles. This is an
important process to create heavy nuclei, and used to search for the islands of stability.

2.7.4 Decay chains, networks, and chain reactions

Many decays actually do not go to a stable nucleus, but to other unstable ones. In
such a case, the relative decay times and abundances play an important role. If the
starting nucleus decays very quickly, then the situation moves to the first nucleus,
which is comparatively stable, with respect to all ancestors states. It then provides
daughter states with a rate slow compared to the available amount according to (2.5)
and thus the production rate of the daughter states will be for a long time rather
constant. Thus, the first generation daughter states will form an equilibrium according
to (2.6). Since usually as long as in such a decay chain the life-times increase,
otherwise the intermediate states can be more or less skipped, such an equilibrium is
formed on the level of all metastable states.
Such decay chains play an important role in forming the relative abundance of
unstable elements observed. The primary production mechanism is mostly due to
supernovas2, where the initial states are created in various fusion processes. They
decay to metastable states, which then form the decay chains described.
Decay networks arise if states can either be decaying in various channels, or fusion
processes supplement new ancestor nuclei. Based on the individual structures, such
decay networks can become very complicated. They play central roles in the burning of
stars, where fusion supplies nuclei, which then can or cannot decay. The most extreme
cases of such decay networks arise in supernovas, where the gravitational collapse of a
star provides enough energy to drive many otherwise impossible fusion processes, and
thus filling many shortlived ancestor states to initiate decay networks.
That is also an example of a chain reaction. Such a chain reaction occurs in the
following situation: There is some nucleus A, which when fused with another nucleus B
decays, and produces in this course again one or more nuclei of type B. If there is some
amount of nucleus A packed sufficiently tight, critical, that the number of decays produces
sufficiently many nuclei of type B that the fusion process can undergo efficiently, there
may be a rapid buildup of decays, which in turn create more and more nuclei of type B
until the reservoir of nuclei of type A becomes so strongly depleted that the chance of a B
nucleus hitting an A nucleus becomes again sub-critical, and the chain reaction stops.
2
There are indications that the collision of neutron stars may also contribute a significant amount.
 This is the process used in conventional nuclear power plants. Here, the amount
of reactions is moderated by engulfing the nuclei of type A, usually uranium, in a
material which efficiently stops nuclei of type B, here neutrons. If this moderator is
reduced, the number of reactions increases. A nuclear meltdown occurs as a chain
reaction if too much moderator is removed. There are several modern processes
which work sub-critical, so that such a risk does not occur. Nuclear weapons are
based on intentionally starting a chain reaction.