Interacting boson model, development

Abstract In this chapter, four topics are treated. (1) Fundamental constituents and interactions of matter and the properties of nuclear forces (experimental facts and phenomenological and meson-field theoretical potentials). (2) Properties of nuclei (mass, binding energy, spin, moments, size, parity, isospin, and characteristic level schemes). (3) Nuclear states and excitations and individual and collective motion of the nucleons in the nuclei. Description of basic experimental facts and their interpretation in the framework of shell, collective, interacting boson, and cluster models. The recent developments, few nucleon systems, and ah initio calculations are also shortly discussed. (4) In the final section, the a- and P-decays, as well as the special decay modes observed far off the stability region are treated. 

We know from the standard model of elementary particle physics [116] that there is a tiny weak interaction contribution to every Coulomb interaction. For ordinary matter, where particle interconversion can be ignored, weak interactions due to exchange of neutral Z vector bosons are involved. Unlike the Coulomb interaction, the (neutral and charged variants of) weak interactions do not conserve parity. This leads, in consequence, to a very small energy difference between mirror-image molecules (enantiomers), which in turn might prove to be of importance for the development of a homochiral biochemistry on our planet [117]. 

The atomic theory of matter, which was conjectured on qualitative empirical grounds as early as the sixth century BC, was shown to be consistent with increasing experimental and theoretical developments since the seventeenth century AD, and definitely proven by the quantitative explanation of the Brownian motion by Einstein and Perrin early in the twentieth century [1], It then took no more than a century between the first measurements of the electron properties in 1896 and of the proton properties in 1919 and the explosion of the number of so-called elementary particles - and their antiparticles - observed in modern accelerators to several hundred (most of which are very short lived and some, not even isolated). Today, the standard model assumes all particles to be built from three groups of four basic fermions - some endowed with exotic characteristics - interacting through four basic forces mediated by bosons - usually with zero charge and mass and with integer spin [2],... 

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