FEW NUCLEON SYSTEMS: APPLICATIONS

Abstract

This chapter reviews the nuclear Thomas–Fermi model and some of its applications of astrophysical interest. The study of few nucleon systems has as a principle objective the determination of the nuclear forces. It can be determined from nucleon–nucleon scattering and from the nucleon–nucleon ground state. However, this analysis leaves certain ambiguities in the interaction, particularly in the off-energy shell behavior. The three-nucleon system gives necessary information concerning this problem. An essential complication arises in the three-body system from the undoubted presence of three-body interactions. At present, it is difficult to separate the uncertainties in the two-body interaction as they affect the three-body system from the contribution of the three-body interaction. The range of applications of the knowledge gained from experiment and from the theory of the two- and three-nucleon systems is equivalent to all of nuclear physics in the energy range below the pion and hyperon thresholds. The chapter discusses the study of nuclei in their ground states or in states of weak excitation, which is the classical range of nuclear physics. The calculation of ground-state properties presents quite different problems from the calculation of the properties of excited states.