Characteristics of the Strong Force

We know that the nuclear force is strongly attractive, binding nucleons together to form a densely packed nucleus. Experiments involving the scattering 

The simplest bound nuclear system, the deuteron, consists of a neutron and a proton. The deuteron is known to have a quadmpole moment, 0.00286 barns, which tells us that the deuteron is not perfectly spherical and that the force between two nucleons is not spherically symmetric. Formally, we say the force between two nucleons has two components, a spherically symmetric central force and an asymmetric tensor force that depends on the angles between the spin axis of each nucleon and the line connecting them. 

Using the relationship between force and potential energy discussed earlier, we can represent the nuclear force in terms of a simple plot of the nuclear potential energy as a function of distance to the center (Fig. 5.1). Since low-energy particles 

---