Fundamentals in Nuclear Physics: From Nuclear Structure to Cosmology , Jean Louis Basdevant , James Rich , and Michel Spiro , Springer, New York, 2005. $79.95 (515 pp.). ISBN 0-387-01672-4
The past 30 years have brought significant advances in astrophysics, cosmology, and neutrino physics. Observers using very powerful telescopes can explore element abundances in distant metal-poor stars. Researchers are making increasingly more precise observations of the many elements formed in the early universe, various aspects of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the accelerated expansion of the universe. Physicists now understand the reasons for the deficiency of solar neutrinos in earlier measurements and have glimpsed the physics beyond the standard model by measuring differences between squares of neutrino masses and two of the neutrino mixing angles. Experimenters are now working to measure the third angle and reduce the uncertainties in what has already been measured.
Nuclear physics plays a crucial role in all of the above developments, a fact perhaps not widely recognized. Fundamentals in Nuclear Physics: From Nuclear Structure to Cosmology , by Jean-Louis Basdevant, James Rich, and Michel Spiro, is aimed at those readers who need a working knowledge of nuclear physics to design neutrino- or darkmatter detection experiments and need to analyze their results. Similarly, interpretation of observations of the stellar and primordial element abundances requires an extensive knowledge of nuclear physics.
The authors are well-regarded scientists who work at the interface of nuclear and particle physics and astrophysics, and the book is based on the late-1980s lectures they gave at the École Polytechnique in Paris. The text succeeds quite well in its aims. Not too many books on the subject share the same goals. The venerable Experimental Nuclear Physics (Wiley, 1953–59) by Emilio Segrè is out of date: It covers neither modern neutrino physics nor astrophysics. Two widely cited books, Cauldrons in the Cosmos: Nuclear Astrophysics (U. of Chicago Press, 1988) by Claus Rolfs and William Rodney and the revised version of Principles of Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis (U. of Chicago Press, 1983) by Donald Clayton, originally published in 1968, are mostly focused on nuclear astrophysics and also need to be updated.
In Fundamentals in Nuclear Physics the authors have found the right balance between presenting nuclear physics as a domain of fundamental research and exploring its applications in neutrino physics, plasma physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. They provide a very readable introduction to nuclear physics and nuclear models. Some readers will appreciate such historical anecdotes as the origin of “borromean,” used to describe a class of nuclei. The chapter on nuclear reactions includes a compact but complete summary of quantum-mechanical tools needed to understand a wide class of nuclear reactions. The authors give an extensive discussion of recent neutrino-physics experiments and the role nuclear physics plays in those experiments. Discussions of nuclear astrophysics and cosmology are brief but provide a good basis for students wishing to consult more specialized texts.
The book offers a thorough treatment of cosmogenic radioactivity, which is so important in planning various low-background counting experiments, and explores at length the overlap between nuclear physics and the fields of plasma physics and nuclear engineering. The authors cover not only the basic physics underlying nuclear fission and fusion but also neutron transport in matter, different kinds of nuclear reactors, and magnetic and laser-driven inertial confinement. The brief accounts of various applications of nuclear radioactivity and of the prehistoric natural reactor in Oklo, Gabon, are nice examples of the kind of supplementary information that most other texts omit.
Most readers should be able to correct the book’s few typographical errors from the context in which they appear. As in many other texts covering a rapidly evolving field, some data the authors mention—including, for example, evidence for pentaquarks—are very preliminary. The authors could have given more information on the physics of exotic nuclei and tools used to explore them, such as radioactive-beam facilities. They also could have included a discussion of relativistic heavy-ion beams and properties of quark–gluon plasmas. But inclusion of those topics would have significantly lengthened the book, making it less appropriate for a one-semester graduate course.
Overall, Fundamentals in Nuclear Physics is a suitable textbook for a graduate-level introductory course aimed at providing background material in nuclear physics to students who intend to specialize in particle physics, plasma physics, and astrophysics. It can also be used as a supplementary textbook in a graduate course designed for students who plan to specialize in nuclear physics.
