4 posts · 970 views
Nuclear Physics: A combination of research highlights and news, and comments on nuclear physics issues and sometimes related science and politics, with a UK bias.
Paul Stevenson
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- June 12, 2013
- 01:48 PM
- 184 views
50 years of the Cabbibo mechanism
by Paul Stevenson in Blog of the Isotopes
Fifty years ago this week, the journal Physical Review Letters published an article by Nicola Cabibbo entitled "Unitary Symmetry and Leptonic Decays". It gave a working and quantitative theoretical description of how particles which interact by the strong interaction (one of the fundamental forces of nature) can decay according to the weak interaction (another of them). It was already known that there were some patterns and rules that seemed to be obeyed, but Cabibbo gave a beautifully simple explanation that also made successful predictions, and that went on to be extended and incorporated into what is now called The Standard Model of Particle Physics.
... Read more »
Cabibbo, N. (1963) Unitary Symmetry and Leptonic Decays. Physical Review Letters, 10(12), 531-533. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.10.531
- March 6, 2013
- 02:29 AM
- 205 views
What can we infer about nuclear matter from giant quadrupole resonances?
by Paul Stevenson in Blog of the Isotopes
To understand what makes protons and neutrons stick together, nuclear physicists correlate the excitation energy of particular vibrational modes of lead nuclei with properties of the matter found inside neutron stars. The surprisingly close correlation reveals information about the nuclear force... Read more »
Roca-Maza, X., Brenna, M., Agrawal, B., Bortignon, P., Colò, G., Cao, L., Paar, N., & Vretenar, D. (2013) Giant quadrupole resonances in ^{208}Pb, the nuclear symmetry energy, and the neutron skin thickness. Physical Review C, 87(3). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.87.034301
- January 20, 2013
- 08:00 PM
- 134 views
The size of lead
by Paul Stevenson in Blog of the Isotopes
Lead nuclei start growing in size at an increased rate as neutrons are added beyond the N=126 'magic number'. A new paper has an idea why.... Read more »
Goddard, P., Stevenson, P., & Rios, A. (2013) Charge Radius Isotope Shift Across the N. Physical Review Letters, 110(3). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.032503
- August 2, 2012
- 09:57 AM
- 447 views
Ring-shaped nuclei
by Paul Stevenson in Blog of the Isotopes
Atomic nuclei have been predicted to exist in a ring configuration when they rotate very rapidly. Such nuclei would be the source of immense magnetic fields.... Read more »
T. Ichikawa, J. A. Maruhn, N. Itagaki, K. Matsuyanagi, P. -G. Reinhard, & S. Ohkubo. (2012) Existence of exotic torus configuration in high-spin excited states of $^{40}$Ca. ArXiv. arXiv: 1207.6250v1
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