Nuclear Structure and Heavy-Ion Reactions

Abstract

The observation of prominent structures in the excitation functions for some heavy-ion induced reactions suggests that simple features of nuclear structure are manifesting themselves at high excitation energies and, presumably, high angular momentum. The purpose of these lectures is to review the framework in which such structures (resonances) are treated in reaction theory, a formalism which had been formulated for light particle reactions a third of a century ago.^1,2 Then, the somewhat more subjective criteria of when a structure is “simple” and when it is not will be presented. Finally, the experimental data are reviewed with particular attention to surface-transparent nuclei which seem to show features that may be susceptible to resonance analysis, and a case in which such a quantitative analysis has been carried out will be discussed.

Work performed under the auspices of the Department of Energy.

These notes are a slightly modified version of lecture notes to be published in the Proceedings of the 1979 Enrico Fermi Summer School on Nuclear Structure, Varenna, Italy, 9–16 July 1979.