Clusters in nuclear physics: From nuclear molecules to cluster radioactivities

Abstract

A unifying point of view of various nuclear phenomena may be best achieved on the basis of two center shell model, allowing to describe di-nuclear systems and the dynamical evolution from one initial nucleus to two final nuclei, or viceversa.Nuclear molecules are very general phenomena. Light and intermediate nuclear molecule signatures have been already detected as resonances in the scattering cross sections, as various kinds of shape isomers (fission isomers, superdeformed and hyperdeformed nuclei at very high spin). In a sens even the nuclear systems exhibiting cluster radioactivities may be viewed as nuclear molecules.Many important physical phenomena are expected to be seen in very heavy dinuclear systems (U-U, U-Cm, etc). They could be produced by using the existing heavy ion accelerators. Potential energy pockets supporting giant nuclear molecules have been predicted in various theoretical approaches [49] [50]. Such giant nuclear molecules are of fundamental importance for the observation of the decay of the vacuum in supercritical fields [51]. Moreover, these giant molecules seem to be the most superdeformed nuclei one can imagine. They deserve to be studied in their own right and may lead to exciting new nuclear structure in the years ahead.Cluster radioactivity is a well established phenomenon. Conceptually it broadened our horizon by telling us that radioactivity is not limited to the three classical modes namely, α-decay, β-decay, and γ-decay. Furthermore, fission and especially cold fission and cluster radioactivity are the same phenomena.