Major Facilities for Nuclear Physics

MAR 01, 1985

Proposed machines such as a multi‐GeV electron accelerator and an ultrarelativistic heavy‐ion collider promise to open new frontiers for the study of nuclei as unique many‐body systems.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881004

Gordon Baym

Nuclear physics is now entering one of the most challenging and interesting periods in the half century since the discovery of the neutron. With the simple picture of the nucleus in terms of the single‐nucleon shell model well understood, nuclear physicists are turning to focus on nuclei as finite, saturating, many‐body systems. The dominant theme promises to be the rich physics generated by the extensive array of nuclear degrees of freedom—from pure nucleonic states, as in the shell model, to mesonic and excited hadronic states, through to quarkgluon degrees of freedom.

References

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Review of the Long Range Plan, November 1984.
See also PHYSICS TODAY, January 1984, page 20.
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More about the Authors

Gordon Baym. University of Illinois, Urbana‐Champaign.