A TEXT BOOK OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS

This text book is the outcome of over thirty year search of one of the author’s enthusiastic longing both as a sincere student who would love to really love the subject of Nuclear physics and as a teacher who constantly trying to make the subject of Nuclear Physics very interesting and inspiring so that the students would love the subject and enjoy and innovate. This text is written primarily for B.Sc. (Honors) in Physics and M.Sc. Physics students of mostly Indian Universities tailored to their most common curricula both as a core course in Nuclear Physics or a specialization in Nuclear Physics both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Care has been taken to not going into the detailed mathematical aspects of the advanced topics. Detailed derivations of the topics that are necessary for the examinations of Indian Universities have been dealt with in complete detail. This course content in its form presented in this text book along with many number of worked-out examples covering the basic as well as advanced level of problems at the end of each chapter along with the multiple choice questions with their answers in Appendix would give confidence to the students to face the questions and problems that appear in our most prestigious competitive examinations like JAM, GATE, CSIR, UGC NET and even the advanced GRE Physics on the subject of Nuclear Physics.

Nuclear Physics can be appreciated in an appropriate way if one considers the vast experimental data that exist in literature and some of the text books like that Kenneth S. Krane. We tried to show a glimpse of the experimental data and their relevance in the Chapters on Gamma Transitions and Nuclear models to a limited extent. More such data on the interplay of experiment and theory can be seen in the text book of Introductory Nuclear Physics by Kenneth S. Krane and the exercises there in. It is expected that the students have a previous background in quantum physics. Mathematical background at the level of differential equations should be sufficient for most applications. Most of the text can be understood with only a minimal background in quantum mechanics.

As is well-known, the most useful experimental data in nuclear physics to deal with the problems across many chapters is the data on the half-lives, ground state spins and parities and atomic mass of different known nuclides (isotopes of elements). We have given in the Appendix II very accurate and the most recent data on all these parameters for about 112 elements and about 1200 nuclides. We have included the mass excess values in keV for all the nuclei. The atomic masses are given in atomic mass unit ‘u’. Most of the illustrations in the form of figures are taken from the public domain.

We offer this humble text book as a token of love to our loving God and Lord Bhagawan Sri SathyaSai Baba varu who has been guiding and guarding us throughout our lives.