Advances in Nuclear Physics, Vol. 24 SYNOPSIS
This year's four articles address topics ranging from the nature of the substructure of the nucleon and the deuteron to the general properties of the nucleus, including its phase transitions and its rich and unexpected quantal properties. They review the present experimental and theoretical understanding of the origin of the spin of the nucleon, the liquid-gas phase transition that occurs at much lower temperatures and densities than those of a quark-gluon plasma in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, the experimental data and theoretical models emerging about very-high-spin states of nuclei, and the history of findings from the deuteron derived from recent electron-deuteron scattering experiments with observed polarizations and other experiments. The authors are not identified.
Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
This year's edition contains one article addressing a highly theoretical issue and one that is solidly phenomenological. The first is a pedagogical overview of light quantization, which has been a central focus of recent nuclear and particle physics because light-cone coordinates are the natural coordinates for describing high-energy scattering; and because of deepening questions about the triviality of the vacuum, the role of zero modes, rotational invariance, and renormalization. The second is a comprehensive review of recent advances in electron-induced nucleon knockout reactions, which in principle could be a powerful tool to explore the energy and momentum distribution of protons and neutrons in finite nuclei. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)