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-profile 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

Today’s 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 you’ve 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 Topics
1 basic properties of nuclei
spectroscopy and scattering
2,3,4 the nucleus
nuclear models, geometric shapes of nuclei
electron scattering
5 nucleon-nucleon interactions
the deuteron, nucleon-nucleon scattering, Yukawa potential
6,7,8 the nucleon
elastic scattering, deep inelastic scattering
form factors, structure functions
quark model, mesons and baryons, hadron physics
9 reactors and bombs
10 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 I’m using the lectures of two colleagues, D.Ireland
(Glasgow) and M.Dueren (Giessen) as input. I’m also using the
web as a source of pictures etc.
As this is the first time I’m 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 find 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]
Atom Atoms consist of a nucleus and an
electron shell.
3.0
Nucleus A nucleus consists of nucleons:
0
protons and neutrons. As the mass
-10
Na-Atom of a nucleon is about 2000 times
10 m [MeV]
Nucleus
the mass of an electron the nucleus
carries practically all the mass of an
3.0
atom.
A nucleon consists of 3 quarks (and
Protons
0
and Neutrons 208
Pb Nucl. gluons).
-14
10 m


[GeV] 1 fm (femtometer, Fermi) = 10 m
Proton
is the typical length scale of nuclear
physics
0.3
Quark 1 MeV (Mega-electron volt) =



0
1.602 J is the typical energy



-15 Proton
10 m scale of nuclear physics
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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 classified 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 specific combination of a number of protons and

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


redundant and is sufficient.


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 β A+1 A+2
Y Y Y Y the different radioactive
Z+1 N−1 Z+1 N Z+1 N+1

A−1 A+1
decays can easily be
n
A
X Z XN−1 Z X N Z XN+1 connected with movement in
A−2 A−1
p
A β+
the chart, e.g. -decay
W W W W corresponds to two-left,
Z−1 N−1 Z−1 N Z−1 N+1
A−4 α two-down.
V V V V this allows to visualise entire
Z−2 N−2
decay chains in an effective
N fashion
it also allows to visualise
other properties, e.g. lifetime
or date of first 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 fields to measure the Q/M ratio and thus the mass M.
In an electric field the radius of curvature of the ion trajectory is
proportional to the kinetic energy:





 










In a magnetic field 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 fields, 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 fields (quadrupole mass spectrometer).
The mass reference is not the proton or the hydrogen atom,


but the isotope C. Carbon and it’s many compounds are

always present in a spectrometer and are well suited for a
mass calibration.
An atomic mass unit is therefore defined as 1/12 of the mass


of the C nuclid:

















 


 















For comparison, the proton mass is 938.272 MeV/c .
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 Nuclear Abundance
One application of
nuclear mass
spectroscopy is the study
of relative isotope
abundances in the solar
Abundance[Si=106] system. (see figure,
normalised to Si).
They are generally the
same throughout the
solar system.
deuterium and helium :
fusion in the first minutes
after the big bang, nuclei


up to Fe : stars, heavier
Mass number A nuclei in supernovae.

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 Nuclear Abundance - Example

Top: Mass spectrum of

xenon isotopes, found in
Counts

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.
The Xe in the gneiss
were produced by sponta-
neous fission of uranium.
(K.Schäfer, MPI Heidel-
Mass number A berg).

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 Nuclear Binding Energy
The binding energy of a nucleus is the difference in in mass


energy between a nucleus and it’s constituent Z protons




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 first 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.
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 fission into lighter nuclei.


This is already the basic argument why only nuclids up to


can be formed in normal stars.
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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