22482 - Nuclear Reactions

Learning outcomes

At the end the student will acquire some knowledge of Nuclear reactions, an important tool to investigate the nuclear structure and reaction mechanisms. In particular the course will treat of heavy ion reactions, in order to study the formation and the subsequent decay of excited nuclear systems. The discussed items  are:

1) nuclear characteristics extracted from low energy heavy ion reactions;

2) experimental measurements of decay products in heavy ion reactions;

3) thermalization, evaporation and multifragmentation of hot excited systems;

4) dynamical and statistical models able to describe excited nuclei decay. 

Course contents

Nuclear reactions: general description. Partial wave analysis. Direct reactions. Anelastic reactions. Breit - Wignr formalism.

Existing accelerators for Nuclear Physics and SPES project.

Heavy ion reactions.

Energy and impact parameter dependence.

Fusion reactions.

Thermalization.

Reaction mechanisms.

Light particle evaporation.

Experimental measurements of decay products in heavy ion reactions.

Hot nuclear systems decay.

Temperature measurements.

Fragmentation and phase transition.

Dynamical and statistical description of the multifragmentation process.

Recent results at Legnaro Laboratories.

Existing experimental apparatuses. Apparatuses for future studies.

Experiments and physics issues to be performet at SPES accelerator.

Applications: hadroterapy

Readings/Bibliography

D. Durand, E. Suraud, B.Tamain - Nuclear Dynamics in the nucleonic regime - Ed. Institute of Physics

 K. S. Krane - Introductory Nuclear Physics - Ed. John Wiley an d Sons

 P.E. Hodgson – E. Gadioli – E. Gadioli-Erba -   Introductory Nuclear Physics - Clarendon Press

Teaching methods

Lectures

Assessment methods

Discussion on a particular item, chosen by the student and on the general arguments 

Office hours

See the website of Mauro Bruno

See the website of Cristian Massimi