Nuclear Physics A469 (1987) 749-750

North-Holland, Amsterdam

BOOK REVIEW

R. BROGLIA, G. HAGEMANN and B. HERSKIND, ed., Nuclear Structure 1985,

Proceedings of the Niels Bohr Centennial Conference, Copenhagen, May 20-24, 1985

(North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1985; xviii - 614 pp.; US$72.75/Dfl. 195); ISBN 0-444-

86979-4.

This was the third of a series of conferences organized by the Niels Bohr Institute

in Copenhagen in order to celebrate the centennial of Niels Bohr’s birthday. In the

thirties Niels Bohr developed the model of a compound nucleus, one of the first

models in nuclear physics and which still plays an essential role in our understanding

of this strongly interacting many-body system. He was also the founder of an

important school of nuclear physics, which over the years has made considerable

contributions to this rapidly growing field of research. The conference organizers

therefore took the opportunity of this centennial meeting to invite a large number

of prominent scientists - many of them having connections in one way or another

with the Niels Bohr Institute - to give a survey of many aspects of current research.

This book contains 39 contributions from 56 authors and was divided into sections:

Single particle motion, collective motion at low excitation energies, collective motion

at high angular momentum, giant resonances and nuclear forces.

B.R. Mottelson gave an interesting introduction about the early history of nuclear

physics with particular emphasis on Niels Bohr’s compound nucleus picture. The

section on single particle motion contained amongst others a survey of dynamical

and static properties of quasi-particles in nuclei by C. Mahaux and R. Sartor. On

the experimental side recent measurements of charge distributions and magnetization

densities show in a most impressive way details of the structure of the wavefunction

of individual nucleons (B. Frois).

In the description of low energy collective motion, boson models have played an

important role. They allow a surprisingly successful phenomenological description

of vibrational, rotational and a variety of transitional nuclei. A. Arima presented a

rather critical account of recent developments of this promising phenomenology

with hints of a microscopic foundation of this approach. Of course no fully micro-

scopic description in terms of fermions of all these phenomena is yet possible,

however, as discussed by A. Faessler present computer facilities allow large scale

microscopic studies for specific problems to be undertaken. With increasing excita-

tion energy the spectra become extremely complex. The implications of this were

discussed by H. Weidenmiiller as a manifestation of quantum chaos. It has become

more and more evident on the experimental side, that spectra can give only part of

750 Book review

the information needed and more knowledge can be obtained nowadays on transition

densities from electron scattering (J. Heisenberg and I. Sick).

One of the major topics of recent research in a number of laboratories is the

study of physics of nuclei at high angular momenta. F.S. Stephens discussed the

rich structure of spectra, which reveal many interesting phenomena, D. Cline

presented measurements of quadrupole matrix elements in these highly rotating

systems, violent shape changes have been recently seen at Daresbury (P.J. Twin)

and the possibility of pairing collapse were discussed by Z. Szymanski.

The study of giant resonances has made considerable progress in the last decade

(H.P. Morsch and C. Gaarde). Most recently in inelastic electron scattering a new

magnetic mode at low excitation energy has been discovered at the Darmstadt

LINAC (A. Richter). Giant Resonances build on highly excited states allow the

study of nuclear structure as a function of temperature and angular velocity (J.J.

Gaardhoje).

The last chapter was devoted to sub-nucleonic degrees of freedom and to nuclear

interactions with contributions from D.O. Riska on meson currents, from M. Rho

on chiral symmetry, from E.J. Moniz on quark exchange in nuclei and from SE.

Koonin of lattice gauge calculations.

These are certainly only a few highlights of the many interesting topics treated

in this book. In all one can say that it can be recommended to any library, where

research on nuclear physics is done. By the nature of the field it cannot claim

completeness. It does, however represent to a large extent the Copenhagen view of

nuclear physics and contains a great number of excellent contributions of current

research.

P. Ring