Physics with Radioactive Nuclear Beams

The purpose of nuclear physics is to measure properties of specific nuclides and infer from them global properties common to all nuclides. One goal, for example, is to understand nuclear sizes and matter distributions in terms of basic nuclear forces. Another is to understand the variation throughout the periodic table of the dominant quantum states, which are known as the “nuclear shell model” states and are characterized, much as are atomic states, by a principal quantum number and by orbital and total angular momentum quantum numbers. In turn other nuclear phenomena, such as the collective excitations known as giant resonances, can be understood in terms of the shell‐model configurations and basic nuclear parameters.