Nuclei and nuclear reactions supply a distinct atmosphere for investigating 3 (and at times even all 4) of the elemental forces in nature. Nuclei were proven – in general by way of acting scattering experiments with electrons, muons and neutrinos – to be prolonged gadgets with complicated inner buildings: constituent quarks; gluons, whose alternate binds the quarks jointly; sea-quarks, the ever present digital quark-antiquark pairs and final yet no longer least, clouds of digital mesons, surrounding an internal nuclear area, their alternate being the resource of the nucleon-nucleon interaction.

The interaction among the (mostly beautiful) hadronic nucleon-nucleon interplay and the repulsive Coulomb strength is liable for the life of nuclei; their measure of balance, expressed within the info and boundaries of the chart of nuclides; their wealthy constitution and the diversity in their interactions. regardless of the extraordinary successes of the classical nuclear types and of ab-initio techniques, there's essentially no lead to sight for both theoretical or experimental advancements as proven e.g. through the hot have to introduce extra refined three-body interactions to account for a more robust photo of nuclear constitution and reactions. but, it seems that the interior constitution of the nucleons has relatively little impression at the habit of the nucleons in nuclei and nuclear physics – specifically nuclear constitution and reactions – is therefore a box of technological know-how in its personal correct, with out a lot recourse to subnuclear levels of freedom.

This e-book collects crucial fabric that was once offered within the kind of lectures notes in nuclear physics classes for graduate scholars on the college of Cologne. It follows the course's procedure, conveying the subject material via combining experimental evidence and experimental tools and instruments with uncomplicated theoretical wisdom. Emphasis is put on the significance of spin and orbital angular momentum (leading e.g. to functions in power examine, corresponding to fusion with polarized nuclei) and at the operational definition of observables in nuclear physics. The end-of-chapter difficulties serve principally to clarify and element actual rules which may no longer be awarded in complete aspect ordinarily text.

Readers are assumed to have a operating wisdom of quantum mechanics and a simple take hold of of either non-relativistic and relativistic kinematics; the latter particularly is a prerequisite for studying nuclear reactions and the connections to particle and high-energy physics.