Nuclear physics

Hans A. Bethe
Floyd R. Newman, Laboratory of Nuclear Studies, Cornell University,
Ithaca, New York 14853

[S0034-6861(99)04302-0]

I. HISTORICAL prising because the electric charges in the atoms of the

foil would deflect the a particles by small angles and
Nuclear physics started in 1894 with the discovery of multiple deflections were expected. But to their surprise,
the radioactivity of uranium by A. H. Becquerel. Marie a few a particles came back on the front side of the foil,
and Pierre Curie investigated this phenomenon in detail: and their number increased with increasing atomic
to their astonishment they found that raw uranium ore weight of the material in the foil. Definitive experiments
was far more radioactive than the refined uranium from with a gold foil were made by Geiger and Marsden in
the chemist’s store. By chemical methods, they could 1909.
separate (and name) several new elements from the ore Rutherford in 1911 concluded that this backward scat-
which were intensely radioactive: radium (Z588), tering could not come about by multiple small-angle
polonium (Z584), a gas they called emanation (Z scatterings. Instead, there must also occasionally be
586) (radon), and even a form of lead (Z582). single deflections by a large angle. These could only be
Ernest Rutherford, at McGill University in Montreal, produced by a big charge concentrated somewhere in
studied the radiation from these substances. He found a the atom. Thus he conceived the nuclear atom: each
strongly ionizing component which he called a rays, and atom has a nucleus with a positive charge equal to the
a weakly ionizing one, b rays, which were more pen- sum of the charges of all the electrons in the atom. The
etrating than the a rays. In a magnetic field, the a rays nuclear charge Ze increases with the atomic weight.
showed positive charge, and a charge-to-mass ratio cor- Rutherford had good experimental arguments for his
responding to 4He. The b rays had negative charge and concept. But when Niels Bohr in 1913 found the theory
were apparently electrons. Later, a still more penetrat- of the hydrogen spectrum, Rutherford declared, ‘‘Now I
ing, uncharged component was found, g rays. finally believe my nuclear atom.’’
Rutherford and F. Soddy, in 1903, found that after The scattering of fast a particles by He indicated also
emission of an a ray, an element of atomic number Z a stronger force than the electrostatic repulsion of the
was transformed into another element, of atomic num- two He nuclei, the first indication of the strong nuclear
ber Z22. (They did not yet have the concept of atomic force. Rutherford and his collaborators decided that this
number, but they knew from chemistry the place of an must be the force that holds a particles inside the
element in the periodic system.) After b-ray emission, Z nucleus and thus was attractive. From many scattering
was transformed into Z11, so the dream of alchemists experiments done over a decade they concluded that
had become true. this attractive force was confined to a radius
It was known that thorium (Z590, A5232) also was
R51.2310213A 1/3 cm, (1)
radioactive, also decayed into radium, radon, polonium
and lead, but obviously had different radioactive behav- which may be considered to be the nuclear radius. This
ior from the decay products of uranium (Z592, A result is remarkably close to the modern value. The vol-
5238). Thus there existed two or more forms of the ume of the nucleons, according to Eq. (1), is propor-
same chemical element having different atomic weights tional to the number of particles in it.
and different radioactive properties (lifetimes) but the When a particles were sent through material of low
same chemical properties. Soddy called these isotopes. atomic weight, particles were emitted of range greater
Rutherford continued his research at Manchester, and than the original a particle. These were interpreted by
many mature collaborators came to him. H. Geiger and Rutherford and James Chadwick as protons. They had
J. M. Nuttall, in 1911, found that the energy of the emit- observed the disintegration of light nuclei, from boron
ted a particles, measured by their range, was correlated up to potassium.
with the lifetime of the parent substance: the lifetime Quantum mechanics gave the first theoretical expla-
decreased very rapidly (exponentially) with increasing nation of natural radioactivity. In 1928 George Gamow,
a-particle energy. and simultaneously K. W. Gurney and E. U. Condon,
By an ingenious arrangement of two boxes inside each discovered that the potential barrier between a nucleus
other, Rutherford proved that the a particles really were and an a particle could be penetrated by the a particle
He atoms: they gave the He spectrum in an electric dis- coming from the inside, and that the rate of penetration
charge. depended exponentially on the height and width of the
Rutherford in 1906 and Geiger in 1908 put thin solid barrier. This explained the Geiger-Nuttall law that the
foils in the path of a beam of a particles. On the far side lifetime of a-radioactive nuclei decreases enormously as
of the foil, the beam was spread out in angle—not sur- the energy of the a particle increases.

S6 Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 71, No. 2, Centenary 1999 0034-6861/99/71(2)/6(10)/$17.00 ©1999 The American Physical Society
 Hans A. Bethe: Nuclear physics S7

On the basis of this theory, Gamow predicted that These paradoxes were resolved in 1932 when Chad-
protons of relatively low energy, less than one million wick discovered the neutron. Now one could assume
electron volts, should be able to penetrate into light nu- that the nucleus consisted of Z protons and A2Z neu-
clei, such as Li, Be, and B, and disintegrate them. When trons. Thus a nucleus of mass A would have Bose
Gamow visited Cambridge, he encouraged the experi- (Fermi) statistics if A was even (odd) which cleared up
menters at the Cavendish Laboratory to build accelera- the 14N paradox, provided that the neutron obeyed
tors of relatively modest voltage, less than one million Fermi statistics and had spin 21 , as it was later shown to
volts. Such accelerators were built by M. L. E. Oliphant have.
on the one hand, and J. D. Cockcroft and E. T. S. Wal- Chadwick already showed experimentally that the
ton on the other. mass of the neutron was close to that of the proton, so
By 1930, when I spent a semester at the Cavendish, the minimum momentum of 1015 erg/c has to be com-
the Rutherford group understood a particles very well. pared with
The penetrating g rays, uncharged, were interpreted as
high-frequency electromagnetic radiation, emitted by a M n c51.7310224333101055310214 erg/c, (4)
nucleus after an a ray: the a particle had left the nucleus where M n is the mass of the nucleon. P min510 215
is
in an excited state, and the transition to the ground state small compared to this, so the wave function of neutron
was accomplished by emission of the g ray. and proton fits comfortably into the nucleus.
The problem was with b rays. Chadwick showed in The discovery of the neutron had been very dramatic.
1914 that they had a continuous spectrum, and this was Walther Bothe and H. Becker found that Be, bom-
repeatedly confirmed. Rutherford, Chadwick, and C. D. barded by a particles, emitted very penetrating rays that
Ellis, in their book on radioactivity in 1930, were baffled. they interpreted as g rays. Curie and Joliot exposed par-
Bohr was willing to give up conservation of energy in affin to these rays, and showed that protons of high en-
this instance. Pauli violently objected to Bohr’s idea, and ergy were ejected from the paraffin. If the rays were
suggested in 1931 and again in 1933 that together with actually g rays, they needed to have extremely high en-
the electron (b-particle) a neutral particle was emitted, ergies, of order 30 MeV. Chadwick had dreamed about
of such high penetrating power that it had never been neutrons for a decade, and got the idea that here at last
observed. This particle was named the neutrino by was his beloved neutron.
Fermi, ‘‘the small neutral one.’’ Chadwick systematically exposed various materials to
the penetrating radiation, and measured the energy of
II. THE NEUTRON AND THE DEUTERON the recoil atoms. Within the one month of February
1932 he found the answer: indeed the radiation consisted
In 1930, when I first went to Cambridge, England, of particles of the mass of a proton, they were neutral,
nuclear physics was in a peculiar situation: a lot of ex- hence neutrons. A beautiful example of systematic ex-
perimental evidence had been accumulated, but there perimentation.
was essentially no theoretical understanding. The Chadwick wondered for over a year: was the neutron
nucleus was supposed to be composed of protons and an elementary particle, like the proton, or was it an ex-
electrons, and its radius was supposed to be ,10212 cm. cessively strongly bound combination of proton and
The corresponding momentum, according to quantum electron? In the latter case, he argued, its mass should
mechanics, was be less than that of the hydrogen atom, because of the
\ 10227 binding energy. The answer was only obtained when
P.P min5 5 510215 erg/c, (2) Chadwick and Goldhaber disintegrated the deuteron by
R 10212 g rays (see below): the mass of the neutron was 0.8 MeV
while from the mass m e of the electron greater than that of the H atom. So, Chadwick decided,
the neutron must be an elementary particle of its own.
m e c53310217 erg/c. (3)
If the neutron was an elementary particle of spin 21 ,
Thus the electrons had to be highly relativistic. How obeying Fermi statistics, the problem of spin and statis-
could such an electron be retained in the nucleus, in- tics of 14N was solved. And one no longer needed to
deed, how could an electron wave function be fitted into squeeze electrons into the too-small space of a nucleus.
the nucleus? Accordingly, Werner Heisenberg and Iwanenko inde-
Further troubles arose with spin and statistics: a pendently in 1933 proposed that a nucleus consists of
nucleus was supposed to contain A protons to make the neutrons and protons. These are two possible states of a
correct atomic weight, and A2Z electrons to give the more general particle, the nucleon. To emphasize this,
net charge Z. The total number of particles was 2A Heisenberg introduced the concept of the isotopic spin
2Z, an odd number if Z was odd. Each proton and t z the proton having t z 51 21 and the neutron t z 52 21 .
electron was known to obey Fermi statistics, hence a This concept has proved most useful.
nucleus of odd Z should also obey Fermi statistics. But Before the discovery of the neutron, in 1931 Harold
band spectra of nitrogen, N2, showed that the N nucleus, Urey discovered heavy hydrogen, of atomic weight 2. Its
of Z57, obeyed Bose statistics. Similarly, proton and nucleus, the deuteron, obviously consists of one proton
electron had spin 21 , so the nitrogen nucleus should have and one neutron, and is the simplest composite nucleus.
half-integral spin, but experimentally its spin was 1. In 1933, Chadwick and Goldhaber succeeded in disinte-

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S8 Hans A. Bethe: Nuclear physics

grating the deuteron by g rays of energy 2.62 MeV, and III. THE LIQUID DROP MODEL
measuring the energy of the proton resulting from the
disintegration. In this way, the binding energy of the A. Energy
deuteron was determined to be 2.22 MeV.
The most conspicuous feature of nuclei is that their
This binding energy is very small compared with that
binding energy is nearly proportional to A, the number
of 4He, 28.5 MeV, which was interpreted as meaning
of nucleons in the nucleus. Thus the binding per particle
that the attraction between two nucleons has very short
is nearly constant, as it is for condensed matter. This is
range and great depth. The wave function of the deu-
in contrast to electrons in an atom: the binding of a 1S
teron outside the potential well is then determined sim-
electron increases as Z 2 .
ply by the binding energy «. It is
The volume of a nucleus, according to Eq. (1), is also
c 5exp~ 2 a r ! /r, (5) proportional to A. This and the binding energy are the
basis of the liquid drop model of the nucleus, used espe-
a 5 ~ M« ! 1/2/\, (6)
cially by Niels Bohr: the nucleus is conceived as filling a
with M the mass of a nucleon. compact volume, spherical or other shape, and its en-
The scattering of neutrons by protons at moderate en- ergy is the sum of an attractive term proportional to the
ergy can be similarly determined, but one has to take volume, a repulsive term proportional to the surface,
into account that the spins of the two nucleons may be and another term due to the mutual electric repulsion of
either parallel (total S51) or antiparallel (S50). The the positively charged protons. In the volume energy,
spin of the deuteron is 1. The S50 state is not bound. there is also a positive term proportional to (N2Z) 2
The scattering, up to at least 10 MeV, can be described 5(A22Z) 2 because the attraction between proton and
by two parameters for each value of S, the scattering neutron is stronger than between two like particles. Fi-
length and the effective range r 0 . The phase shift for nally, there is a pairing energy: two like particles tend to
L50 is given by go into the same quantum state, thus decreasing the en-
ergy of the nucleus. A combination of these terms leads
1 1
k cot d 52 1 k 2 r 0 , (7) to the Weizsäcker semi-empirical formula
a 2
E52a 1 A1a 2 A 2/31a 3 Z 2 A 21/3
where k is the wave number in the center-of-mass sys-
tem, d the phase shift, a the scattering length, and r 0 the 1a 4 ~ A22Z ! 2 A 21 1la 5 A 23/4. (9)
effective range. Experiments on neutron-proton scatter-
Over the years, the parameters a 1 , . . . ,a 5 have been
ing result in
determined. Green (1954) gives these values (in MeV):
a t 55.39 fm, r ot 51.72 fm,
a 1 515.75, a 2 517.8,
a s 5223.7 fm, r os 52.73 fm, (8)
a 3 50.710, a 4 523.7,
where t and s designate the triplet and singlet L50
states, 3 S and 1 S. The experiments at low energy, up to a 5 534. (10)
about 10 MeV, cannot give any information on the The factor l is 11 if Z and N5A2Z are both odd, l
shape of the potential. The contribution of L.0 is very 521 if they are both even, and l50 if A is odd. Many
small for E,10 MeV, because of the short range of
more accurate expressions have been given.
nuclear forces.
For small mass number A, the symmetry term (N
Very accurate experiments were done in the 1930s on
2Z) 2 puts the most stable nucleus at N5Z. For larger
the scattering of protons by protons, especially by Tuve
and collaborators at the Carnegie Institution of Wash- A, the Coulomb term shifts the energy minimum to Z
ington, D.C., and by R. G. Herb et al. at the University ,A/2.
of Wisconsin. The theoretical interpretation was mostly Among very light nuclei, the energy is lowest for
done by Breit and collaborators. The system of two pro- those which may be considered multiples of the a par-
tons, at orbital momentum L50, can exist only in the ticle, such as 12C, 16O, 20Ne, 24Mg, 28Si, 32S, 40Ca. For
state of total spin S50. The phase shift is the shift rela- A556, 56Ni (Z528) still has strong binding but 56Fe
tive to a pure Coulomb field. The scattering length re- (Z526) is more strongly bound. Beyond A556, the
sulting from the analysis is close to that of the 1 S state preference for multiples of the a particle ceases.
of the proton-neutron system. This is the most direct For nearly all nuclei, there is preference for even Z
evidence for charge independence of nuclear forces. and even N. This is because a pair of neutrons (or pro-
There is, however, a slight difference: the proton- tons) can go into the same orbital and can then have
neutron force is slightly more attractive than the proton- maximum attraction.
proton force. Many nuclei are spherical; this giving the lowest sur-
Before World War II, the maximum particle energy face area for a given volume. But when there are many
available was less than about 20 MeV. Therefore only nucleons in the same shell (see Sec. VII), ellipsoids, or
the S-state interaction between two nucleons could be even more complicated shapes (Nielsen model), are of-
investigated. ten preferred.

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 Hans A. Bethe: Nuclear physics S9

B. Density distribution search in Berlin and found some sequences of radioac-

tivities following each other. When Austria was annexed
Electron scattering is a powerful way to measure the to Germany in Spring 1938, Meitner, an Austrian Jew,
charge distribution in a nucleus. Roughly, the angular lost her job and had to leave Germany; she found refuge
distribution of elastic scattering gives the Fourier trans- in Stockholm.
form of the radial charge distribution. But since Ze 2 /\c Otto Hahn and F. Strassmann continued the research
is quite large, explicit calculation with relativistic elec- and identified chemically one of the radioactive products
tron wave functions is required. Experimentally, Hof- from uranium (Z592). To their surprise they found the
stadter at Stanford started the basic work. radioactive substance was barium, (Z556). Hahn, in a
In heavy nuclei, the charge is fairly uniformly distrib- letter to Meitner, asked for help. Meitner discussed it
uted over the nuclear radius. At the surface, the density with her nephew, Otto Frisch, who was visiting her. Af-
falls off approximately like a Fermi distribution, ter some discussion, they concluded that Hahn’s findings
r / r 0 ' @ 11exp~ r2R ! /a # 21 , (11) were quite natural, from the standpoint of the liquid
drop model: the drop of uranium split in two. They
with a'0.5 fm; the surface thickness, from 90% to 10% called the process ‘‘fission.’’
of the central density, is about 2.4 fm. Once this general idea was clear, comparison of the
In more detailed studies, by the Saclay and Mainz atomic weight of uranium with the sum of the weights of
groups, indications of individual proton shells can be dis- the fission products showed that a very large amount of
cerned. Often, there is evidence for nonspherical shapes. energy would be set free in fission. Frisch immediately
The neutron distribution is more difficult to determine proved this, and his experiment was confirmed by many
experimentally; sometimes the scattering of p mesons is laboratories. Further, the fraction of neutrons in the
useful. Inelastic electron scattering often shows a maxi- nucleus, N/A5(A2Z)/A, was much larger in uranium
mum at the energy where scattering of the electron by a than in the fission products hence neutrons would be set
single free proton would lie. free in fission. This was proved experimentally by Joliot
and Curie. Later experiments showed that the average
number of neutrons per fission was n 52.5. This opened
C. a radioactivity
the prospect of a chain reaction.
Equation (9) represents the energy of a nucleus rela- A general theory of fission was formulated by Niels
tive to that of free nucleons, 2E is the binding energy. Bohr and John Wheeler in 1939. They predicted that
The mass excess of Z protons and (A2Z) neutrons is only the rare isotope of uranium, U-235, would be fis-
sionable by slow neutrons. The reason was that U-235
DM57.3Z18.1~ A2Z ! MeV, (12) had an odd number of neutrons. After adding the neu-
which complies with the requirement that the mass of tron from outside, both fission products could have an
12
C is 12 amu. The mass excess of the nucleus is even number of neutrons, and hence extra binding en-
ergy due to the formation of a neutron pair. Conversely,
E1DM5E17.3Z18.1~ A2Z ! MeV. (13) in U-238 one starts from an even number of neutrons, so
The mass excess of an a particle is 2.4 MeV, or 0.6 MeV one of the fission products must have an odd number.
per nucleon. So the excess of the mass of nucleus (Z,A) Nier then showed experimentally that indeed U-235 can
over that of Z/2 a particles plus A22Z neutrons is be fissioned by slow neutrons while U-238 requires neu-
trons of about 1 MeV.
E 8 5E1DM2 ~ Z/2! 0.6 MeV
5E17.0Z18.1~ A2Z ! . (14) E. The chain reaction
The (smoothed) energy available for the emission of an
Fission was discovered shortly before the outbreak of
a particle is then
World War II. There was immediate interest in the
E 9 ~ Z,A ! 5E 8 ~ Z,A ! 2E 8 ~ Z22,A24 ! . (15) chain reaction in many countries.
This quantity is negative for small A, positive from To produce a chain reaction, on average at least one
about the middle of the periodic table on. When it be- of the 2.5 neutrons from a U-235 fission must again be
comes greater than about 5 MeV, emission of a particles captured by a U-235 and cause fission. The first chain
becomes observable. This happens when A>208. It reaction was established by Fermi and collaborators on
helps that Z582, A5208 is a doubly magic nucleus. 2 December 1942 at the University of Chicago. They
used a ‘‘pile’’ of graphite bricks with a lattice of uranium
metal inside.
D. Fission The graphite atoms served to slow the fission neu-
trons, originally emitted at about 1 MeV energy, down
In the mid 1930s, Fermi’s group in Rome bombarded to thermal energies, less than 1 eV. At those low ener-
samples of most elements with neutrons, both slow and gies, capture by the rare isotope U-235 competes favor-
fast. In nearly all elements, radioactivity was produced. ably with U-238. The carbon nucleus absorbs very few
Uranium yielded several distinct activities. Lise Meitner, neutrons, but the graphite has to be very pure C. Heavy
physicist, and Otto Hahn, chemist, continued this re- water works even better.

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S10 Hans A. Bethe: Nuclear physics

The chain reaction can either be controlled or explo- TABLE I. P and D phase shifts at 300 MeV, in degrees.
sive. The Chicago pile was controlled by rods of boron 1
P 228 1
D2 125
absorber whose position could be controlled by the op- 3
P0 210 3
D1 224
erator. For production of power, the graphite is cooled
by flowing water whose heat is then used to make steam.
3
P1 228 3
D2 125
In 1997, about 400 nuclear power plants were in opera-
3
P2 117 3
D3 14
tion (see Till, 1999).
In some experimental ‘‘reactors,’’ the production of
heat is incidental. The reactor serves to produce neu- plete set of required measurements is given (Walecka,
trons which in turn can be used to produce isotopes for 1995). The initial polarization, it turns out, is best
use as tracers or in medicine. Or the neutrons them- achieved by scattering the protons from a target with
selves may be used for experiments such as determining nuclei of zero spin, such as carbon.
the structure of solids. Proton-proton scattering is relatively straightforward,
Explosive chain reactions are used in nuclear weap- but in the analysis the effect of the Coulomb repulsion
ons. In this case, the U-235 must be separated from the must, of course, be taken into account. It is relatively
abundant U-238. The weapon must be assembled only small except near the forward direction. The nuclear
immediately before its use. Plutonium-239 may be used force is apt to be attractive, so there is usually an inter-
instead of U-235 (see Drell, 1999). ference minimum near the forward direction.
The scattering of neutrons by protons is more difficult
to measure, because there is no source of neutrons of
IV. THE TWO-NUCLEON INTERACTION definite energy. Fortunately, when fast protons are scat-
tered by deuterons, the deuteron often splits up, and a
A. Experimental neutron is projected in the forward direction with almost
the full energy of the initial proton.
A reasonable goal of nuclear physics is the determina-
tion of the interaction of two nucleons as a function of
their separation. Because of the uncertainty principle, B. Phase shift analysis
this requires the study of nuclear collisions at high en-
ergy. Before the second World War, the energy of accel- The measurements can be represented by phase shifts
erators was limited. After the war, cyclotrons could be of the partial waves of various angular momenta. In
built with energies upward of 100 MeV. This became proton-proton scattering, even orbital momenta occur
possible by modulating the frequency, specifically, de- only together with zero total spin (singlet states), odd
creasing it on a prescribed schedule as any given batch orbital momenta with total spin one (triplet states).
of particles, e.g., protons, is accelerated. The frequency Phase shift analysis appeared quite early, e.g., by Stapp,
of the accelerating electric field must be Ypsilantis, and Metropolis in 1957. But as long as only
experiments at one energy were used, there were several
v ;B/m eff , sets of phase shifts that fitted the data equally well. It
in order to keep that field in synchronism with the or- was necessary to use experiments at many energies, de-
bital motion of the particles. Here B is the local mag- rive the phase shifts and demand that they depend
netic field which should decrease (slowly) with the dis- smoothly on energy.
tance r from the center of the cyclotron in order to keep A very careful phase shift analysis was carried out by
the protons focused; m eff5E/c2 is the relativistic mass of a group in Nijmegen, Netherlands, analyzing first the pp
the protons which increases as the protons accelerate and the np (neutron-proton) scattering up to 350 MeV
and r increases. Thus the frequency of the electric field (Bergervoet et al., 1990). They use np data from well
between the dees of the cyclotron must decrease as the over 100 experiments from different laboratories and
protons accelerate. energies. Positive phase shifts means attraction.
Such frequency modulation (FM) had been developed As is well known, S waves are strongly attractive at
in the radar projects during World War II. At the end of low energies, e.g., at 50 MeV, the 3 S phase shift is 60°,
1
that war, E. McMillan in the U.S. and Veksler in the S is 40°. 3 S is more attractive than 1 S, just as, at E
Soviet Union independently suggested the use of FM in 50, there is a bound 3 S state but not of 1 S. At high
the cyclotron. It was introduced first at Berkeley and energy, above about 300 MeV, the S phase shifts be-
was immediately successful. These FM cyclotrons were come repulsive, indicating a repulsive core in the poten-
built at many universities, including Chicago, Pittsburgh, tial.
Rochester, and Birmingham (England). The P and D phase shifts at 300 MeV are shown in
The differential cross section for the scattering of pro- Table I (Bergervoet et al., 1990). The singlet states are
tons by protons at energies of 100 to 300 MeV was soon attractive or repulsive, according to whether L is even or
measured. But since the proton has spin, this is not odd. This is in accord with the idea prevalent in early
enough: the scattering of polarized protons must be nuclear theory (1930s) that there should be exchange
measured for two different directions of polarization, forces, and it helps nuclear forces to saturate. The triplet
and as a function of scattering angle. Finally, the change states of J5L have nearly the same phase shifts as the
of polarization in scattering must be measured. A com- corresponding singlet states. The triplet states show a

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 Hans A. Bethe: Nuclear physics S11

tendency toward a spin-orbit force, the higher J being interaction based on the transfer of a meson from
more attractive than the lower J. nucleon i to j, and a second meson from j to k. The main
term in this interaction is
C. Potential V ijk 5AY ~ mr ij ! Y ~ mr jk ! s i • s j s j • s k t i • t j t j • t k , (19)
In the 1970s, potentials were constructed by the Bonn where Y is the Yukawa function,
and the Paris groups. Very accurate potentials, using the exp~ 2mcr/\ !
Nijmegen data base were constructed by the Nijmegen Y ~ mr ! 5 . (20)
mcr/\
and Argonne groups.
We summarize some of the latter results, which in- The cyclic interchanges have to be added to V 123 . There
clude the contributions of vacuum polarization, the mag- is also a tensor force which has to be suitably cut off at
netic moment interaction, and finite size of the neutron small distances. It is useful to also add a repulsive cen-
and proton. The longer range nuclear interaction is one- tral force at small r.
pion exchange (OPE). The shorter-range potential is a The mass m is the average of the three p mesons, m
sum of central, L 2 , tensor, spin-orbit and quadratic spin- 5 31 m p 0 1 32 m p 6 . The coefficient A is adjusted to give the
orbit terms. A short range core of r 0 50.5 fm is included correct 3H binding energy and the correct density of
in each. The potential fits the experimental data very nuclear matter. When this is done, the binding energy of
4
well: excluding the energy interval 290–350 MeV, and He automatically comes out correctly, a very gratifying
counting both pp and np data, their x 2 53519 for 3359 result. So no four-body forces are needed.
data. The theoretical group at Argonne then proceed to cal-
No attempt is made to compare the potential to any culate nuclei of atomic weight 6 to 8. They used a
meson theory. A small charge dependent term is found. Green’s function Monte Carlo method to obtain a suit-
The central potential is repulsive for r,0.8 fm; its mini- able wave function and obtained the binding energy of
mum is 255 MeV. The maximum tensor potential is the ground state to within about 2 MeV. For very un-
about 50 MeV, the spin-orbit potential at 0.7 fm is about usual nuclei like 7He or 8Li, the error may be 3–4 MeV.
130 MeV. Excited states have similar accuracy, and are arranged in
the correct order.
D. Inclusion of pion production

Nucleon-nucleon scattering ceases to be elastic once VI. NUCLEAR MATTER

pions can be produced. Then all phase shifts become
complex. The average of the masses of p 1 , p 0 , and p 2 ‘‘Nuclear matter’’ is a model for large nuclei. It as-
is 138 MeV. Suppose a pion is made in the collision of sumes an assembly of very many nucleons, protons, and
two nucleons, one at rest (mass M) and one having en- neutrons, but disregards the Coulomb force. The aim is
ergy E.M in the laboratory. Then the square of the to calculate the density and binding energy per nucleon.
invariant mass is initially In first approximation, each nucleon moves indepen-
~ E1M ! 2 2P 2 52M 2 12EM. (16) dently, and because we have assumed a very large size,
its wave function is an exponential, exp(ik•r). Nucleons
Suppose in the final state the two nucleons are at rest interact, however, with their usual two-body forces;
relative to each other, and in their rest system a pion is therefore, the wave functions are modified wherever two
produced with energy «, momentum p, and mass m. nucleons are close together. Due to its interactions, each
Then the invariant mass is nucleon has a potential energy, so a nucleon of wave
~ 2M1« ! 2 2 p 2 54M 2 14M«1 m 2 . (17) vector k has an energy E(k)Þ(\ 2 /2m)k 2 .
Consider two particles of momenta k1 and k2 ; their
Setting the two invariant masses equal, unperturbed energy is
E2M52«1 m 2 /2M, (18) W5E ~ k 1 ! 1E ~ k 2 ! , (21)
a remarkably simple formula for the initial kinetic en- and their unperturbed wave function is
ergy in the laboratory. The absolute minimum for meson
production is 286 MeV. The analysts have very reason- f 5exp@ iP• ~ r1 1r2 !# 3exp@ ik0 • ~ r1 2r2 !# , (22)
ably chosen E2M5350 MeV for the maximum energy where P5(k1 1k2 )/2 and k0 51/2(k1 2k2 ). We disregard
at which nucleon-nucleon collision may be regarded as the center-of-mass motion and consider
essentially elastic.
f 5e ik0 •r, (23)
V. THREE-BODY INTERACTION as the unperturbed wave function. Under the influence
of the potential v this is modified to
The observed binding energy of the triton, 3H, is 8.48
c 5 f 2 ~ Q/e !v c . (24)
MeV. Calculation with the best two-body potential gives
7.8 MeV. The difference is attributed to an interaction Here v c is considered to be expanded in plane wave
between all three nucleons. Meson theory yields such an states k 81 , k 82 , and

Rev. Mod. Phys., Vol. 71, No. 2, Centenary 1999

S12 Hans A. Bethe: Nuclear physics

e5E ~ k 81 ! 1E ~ k 82 ! 2W, (25) with deep and attractive potential wells, are the qualita-
tive explanation. The next proton or neutron must be in
Q51 if states k 81 and k 82 are both unoccupied, a relative p state, so it cannot come close, and, in addi-
Q50 otherwise. (26) tion, by the exchange character of the forces (see Sec.
IV.C), the interaction with the a particle is mainly repul-
Equation (26) states the Pauli principle and ensures that sive: thus there is no bound nucleus of A55, neither
e.0 always. It is assumed that the occupied states fill a 5
He nor 5Li. The a particle is a closed unit, and the most
Fermi sphere of radius k F .
We set stable light nuclei are those which may be considered to
be multiples of the a particles, 12C, 16O, 20Ne, 24Mg, etc.
v c 5G f , (27) But even among these a-particle nuclei, 16O is special:
and thus define the reaction matrix G, which satisfies the the binding energy of a to 12C, to form 16O, is consid-
erably larger than the binding of a to 16O. Likewise,

J
equation
Ca is special: it is the last nucleus ‘‘consisting’’ of a
E
40

^ ku G u k0 ;P,W & 5 ^ ku v u k0 & 2 ~ 2 p ! 23 d 3k 8 particles only which is stable against b decay.

. The binding energies can be understood by consider-
Q ~ P,k 8 ! ing nuclei built up of individual nucleons. The nucleons
^ ku v u k8 & ^ k8 u G u k;P,W &
E ~ P1k8 ! 1E ~ P2k8 ! 2W may be considered moving in a square well potential
(28) with rounded edges, or more conveniently, an oscillator
This is an integral equation for the matrix ^ k u G u k 0 & . P potential of frequency v. The lowest state for a particle
and W are merely parameters in this equation. in that potential is a 1s state of energy « 0 . There are two
The diagonal elements ^ k u G u k 0 ,P & can be transcribed places in the 1s shell, spin up and down; when they are
into the k 1 , k 2 of the interacting nucleons. The one- filled with both neutrons and protons, we have the a
particle energies are then particle.
The next higher one-particle state is 1p, with energy
W~ k1!5 (
k
^ k 1 k 2 u G u k 1 k 2 & 1 ~ \ 2 /2M ! k 21 .
2
(29) « 0 1\ v . The successive eigenstates are

With modern computers, the matrix Eq. (28) can be ~ 1s ! , ~ 1p ! , ~ 1d2s ! , ~ 1f2p ! , ~ 1g2d3s !
solved for any given potential v . In the 1960s, approxi- with energies
mations were used. First it was noted that for states out-
side the Fermi sphere, G was small; then E(P6k8 ) in ~ «0!, ~ « 0 1\ v ! , ~ « 0 12\ v ! , ~ « 0 13\ v ! .
the denominator of Eq. (28) was replaced by the kinetic The principal quantum number is chosen to be equal to
energy. Second, for the occupied states, the potential the number of radial nodes plus one. The number of
energy was approximated by a quadratic function, independent eigenfunctions in each shell are
W ~ k ! 5 ~ \ 2 /2M * ! k 2 , (30) ~ 2 !, ~ 6 !, ~ 12! , ~ 20! , ~ 30! ,
M * being an effective mass. so the total number up to any given shell are
It was then possible to obtain the energy of nuclear
~ 2 !, ~ 8 !, ~ 20! , ~ 40! , ~ 70! , ... .
matter as a function of its density. But the result was not
satisfactory. The minimum energy was found at too high The first three of these numbers predict closed shells at
a density, about 0.21 fm23 instead of the observed 0.16 4
He, 10O, and 40Ca, all correct. But Z540 or N540 are
fm23. The binding energy was only 11 MeV instead of not particularly strongly bound nuclei.
the observed 16 MeV. The solution to this problem was found independently
Modern theory has an additional freedom, the three- by Maria Goeppert-Mayer and H. Jensen: nucleons are
body interaction. Its strength can be adjusted to give the subject to a strong spin-orbit force which gives added
correct density. But the binding energy, according to the attraction to states with j5 l 11/2, repulsion to j5 l
Argonne-Urbana group, is still only 12 MeV. They be- 21/2. This becomes stronger with increasing j. The
lieve they can improve this by using a more sophisti- strongly bound nucleons beyond the 1d2s shell, are
cated wave function.
~ 1f 7/2! , ~ 2p1f 5/21g 9/2! , ~ 2d3s1g 7/21h 11/2! ,
In spite of its quantitative deficiencies nuclear matter
theory gives a good general approach to the interaction ~ 2 f3p1h 9/21i 13/2! .
of nucleons in a nucleus. This has been used especially
by Brown and Kuo (1966) in their theory of interaction The number of independent eigenfunctions in these
of nucleons in a shell. shells are, respectively,
~ 8 !, ~ 22! , ~ 32! , ~ 44! .
VII. SHELL MODEL
So the number of eigenstates up to 1f 7/2 is 28, up to 1g 9/2
A. Closed shells is 50, up to 1h 11/2 is 82, and up to 1i 13/2 is 126. Indeed,
nuclei around Z528 or N528 are particularly strongly
The strong binding of the a particle is easily under- bound. For example, the last a particle in 56Ni (Z5N
stood; a pair of neutrons and protons of opposite spin, 528) is bound with 8.0 MeV, while the next a particle,

Rev. Mod. Phys., Vol. 71, No. 2, Centenary 1999

 Hans A. Bethe: Nuclear physics S13

in 60Zn (Z5N530) has a binding energy of only 2.7 creates an electron f e and an antineutrino f̄ n , and con-
MeV. Similarly, 90Zr (N550) is very strongly bound verts a neutron c n into a proton c p . The electron and
and Sn, with Z550, has the largest number of stable the neutrino are not in the nucleus, but are created in
isotopes. 208Pb (Z582,N5126) has closed shells for pro- the b process. All operators are taken at the same point
tons as well as neutrons, and nuclei beyond Pb are un- in space-time.
stable with respect to a decay. The disintegration Fermi assumed a vector interaction in his first b-decay
212
Po→208Pb1a yields a particles of 8.95 MeV while paper.
208
Pb→204Hg1a would release only 0.52 MeV, and an a The Fermi theory proved to be essentially correct, but
particle of such low energy could not penetrate the po- Gamov and Teller later introduced other covariant com-
tential barrier in 1010 years. So there is good evidence binations allowed by Dirac theory. Gamov and Teller
for closed nucleon shells. said there could be a product of two 4-vectors, or ten-
Nuclei with one nucleon beyond a closed shell, or one sors, or axial vectors, or pseudoscalars. Experiment
nucleon missing, generally have spins as predicted by the showed later on that the actual interaction is
shell model.
Vector minus Axial vector, (32)
and this could also be justified theoretically.
B. Open shells
The b-process, Eq. (31), can only happen if there is a
vacancy in the proton state c p . If there is in the nucleus
The energy levels of nuclei with partly filled shells are
a neutron of the same orbital momentum, we have an
usually quite complicated. Consider a nucleus with the
allowed transition, as in 13N→13C. If neutron and proton
44-shell about half filled: there will be of the order of
differ by units in angular momentum, so must the lep-
2 44'1013 different configurations possible. It is obvi-
tons. The wave number of the leptons is small, then the
ously a monumental task to find the energy eigenvalues.
product (kR) L is very small if L is large: such b transi-
Some help is the idea of combining a pair of orbitals
tions are highly forbidden. An example is 40K which has
of the same j and m values of opposite sign. Such pairs
angular momentum L54 while the daughter 40Ca has
have generally low energy, and the pair acts as a boson.
L50. The radioactive 40K has a half-life of 1.3
Iachello and others have built up states of the nucleus
3109 years.
from such bosons.
This theory was satisfactory to explain observed b de-
cay, but it was theoretically unsatisfactory to have a pro-
VIII. COLLECTIVE MOTIONS cess involving four field operators at the same space-
time point. Such a theory cannot be renormalized. So it
Nuclei with incomplete shells are usually not spheri- was postulated that a new charged particle W was in-
cal. Therefore their orientation in space is a significant volved which interacted both with leptons and with
observable. We may consider the rotation of the nucleus baryons, by interactions such as
as a whole. The moment of inertia u is usually quite
large; therefore, the rotational energy levels which are f̄ e W f̄ n , c̄ p W c n .
proportional to 1/u are closely spaced. The lowest exci- This W particle was discovered at CERN and has a mass
tations of a nucleus are rotations. of 80 GeV. These interactions, involving three rather
Aage Bohr and Ben Mottleson have worked exten- than four operators, are renormalizable. The high mass
sively on rotational states and their combination with of W ensures that in b-decay all the operators c n , c p ,
intrinsic excitation of individual nucleons. There are also f n , f e have to be taken essentially at the same point,
vibrations of the nucleus, e.g., the famous vibration of all within about 10216 cm, and the Fermi theory results.
neutrons against all protons, the giant dipole state at an A neutral counterpart to W, the Z particle, was also
excitation energy of 10–20 MeV, depending on the mass found at CERN; it can decay into a pair of electrons, a
number A. pair of neutrinos, or a pair of baryons. Its mass has been
Many nuclei, in their ground state, are prolate sphe- determined with great accuracy,
roids. Their rotations then are about an axis perpendicu-
lar to their symmetry axis, and an important character- m ~ Z ! 591 GeV. (33)
istic is their quadrupole moment. Many other nuclei The difference in masses of Z and W is of great theoret-
have more complicated shapes such as a pear; they have ical importance. The mass of Z has a certain width from
an octopole moment, and their rotational states are which the number of species of neutrinos can be deter-
complicated. mined, namely three: n e , n m , and n t .

IX. WEAK INTERACTIONS

X. NUCLEOSYNTHESIS
Fermi, in 1934, formulated the the first theory of the
weak interaction on the basis of Pauli’s neutrino hypoth- It is an old idea that matter consisted ‘‘originally’’ of
esis. An operator of the form protons and electrons, and that complex nuclei were
gradually formed from these (see Salpeter, 1999). (Mod-
f̄ e f n c̄ p c n (31) ern theories of the big bang put ‘‘more elementary’’ par-

Rev. Mod. Phys., Vol. 71, No. 2, Centenary 1999

S14 Hans A. Bethe: Nuclear physics

ticles, like quarks, even earlier, but this is of no concern Many supernovae explosions have taken place in the
here.) At a certain epoch, some neutrons would be galaxy, and so galactic matter contains a fair fraction Z
formed by of elements beyond C, called ‘‘metals’’ by astrophysi-
cists, viz., Z.2%. This is true in the solar system,
H1e 2 →N1 n . (34) formed about 4.5 billion years ago. New stars should
These neutrons would immediately be captured by pro- have a somewhat higher Z, old stars are known to have
tons, smaller Z.
Stars of M>3M ( are formed from galactic matter
N1H→D1 g , (35) that already contains appreciable amounts of heavy nu-
and the deuterons would further capture protons, giving clei up to 56Fe. Inside the stars, the carbon cycle of
3
He and 4He. This sequence of reactions, remarkably, nuclear reactions takes place, in which 14N is the most
leads to a rather definite fraction of matter in 4He nu- abundant nucleus. If the temperature then rises to about
clei, namely 100 million degrees, neutrons will be produced by the
reactions
4
He'23%, (36) 14
N14He→17F1n,
3
nearly all the rest remaining H. Traces of D, He, and 17
7
Li remain. O14He→20Ne1n. (38)
Again remarkably, there exist very old stars (in globu- The neutrons will be preferentially captured by the
lar clusters) in which the fraction of 4He can be mea- heavy nuclei already present and will gradually build up
sured, and it turns out to be just 23%. This fraction de- heavier nuclei by the s-process described in the famous
pends primarily on the number of neutrino species article by E.M. and G. R. Burbidge, Fowler, and Hoyle
which, as mentioned at the end of Sec. IX is three. in Reviews of Modern Physics (1957).
In stars like the sun and smaller, nuclear reactions Some nuclei, especially the natural radioactive ones,
take place in which H is converted into He at a tempera- U and Th, cannot be built up in this way, but require the
ture of the order of 10–20 million degrees, and the re- r-process, in which many neutrons are added to a
leased energy is sent out as radiation. If, at later stages nucleus in seconds so there is no time for b decay. The
in the evolution, some of the material of such a star is conditions for the r-process have been well studied; they
lost into the galaxy, the fraction of 4He in the galaxy include a temperature of more than 109 K. This condi-
increases, but very slowly. tion is well fulfilled in the interior of a supernova a few
In a star of three times the mass of the sun or more, seconds after the main explosion, but there are addi-
tional conditions so that it is still uncertain whether this
other nuclear processes occur. Early in its life (on the
is the location of the r-process.
main sequence), the star produces energy by converting
H into He in its core. But after a long time, say a billion
years, it has used up the H in its core. Then the core XI. SPECIAL RELATIVITY
contracts and gets to much higher temperatures, of the
order of 100 million degrees or more. Then a particles For the scattering of nucleons above about 300 MeV,
can combine, and for the equation of state of nuclear matter of high
density, special relativity should be taken into account.
3 4He→12C1 g . (37) A useful approximation is mean field theory which has
4 8
Two He cannot merge, since Be is slightly heavier than been especially developed by J. D. Walecka.
two 4He, but at high temperature and density, 8Be can Imagine a large nucleus. At each point, we can define
exist for a short time, long enough to capture another the conserved baryon current i c̄g m c where c is the
4
He. Equation (37) was discovered in 1952 by E. E. Sal- baryon field, consisting of protons and neutrons. We
peter; it is the crucial step. also have a scalar baryon density c̄c . They couple, re-
Once 12C has formed, further 4He can be captured spectively, to a vector field V m and a scalar field f with
and heavier nuclei built up. This happens especially in coupling constants g w and g s . The vector field is identi-
the inner part of stars of 10 or more times the mass of fied with the v meson, giving a repulsion, and the scalar
the sun. The buildup leads to 16O, 20Ne, 24Mg, 28Si, and field with the s meson, giving an attraction. Coupling
on to 56Ni. The latter is the last nucleus in which the a constants can be adjusted so as to give a minimum en-
particle is strongly bound (see Sec. VII). But it is un- ergy of 216 MeV per nucleon and equilibrium density
stable against b decay; by two emissions of positrons it of 0.16 fm23.
transforms into 56Fe. This makes 56Fe one of the most The theory can be generalized to neutron matter and
abundant isotopes beyond 16O. After forming all these thus to the matter of neutron stars. It can give the
elements, the interior of the star becomes unstable and charge distribution of doubly magic nuclei, like 208Pb,
40
collapses by gravitation. The energy set free by gravita- Ca, and 16O, and these agree very well with the distri-
tion then expels all the outer parts of the star (all except butions observed in electron scattering.
the innermost 1.5M ( ) in a supernova explosion and thus The most spectacular application is to the scattering
makes the elements formed by nucleosynthesis available of 500 MeV protons by 40Ca, using the Dirac relativistic
to the galaxy at large. impulse approximation for the proton. Not only are

Rev. Mod. Phys., Vol. 71, No. 2, Centenary 1999

 Hans A. Bethe: Nuclear physics S15

cross section minima at the correct scattering angles, but Green, E. S., 1954, Phys. Rev. 95, 1006.
polarization of the scattered protons is almost complete, Pudliner, B. S., V. R. Pandharipande, J. Carlson, S. C. Pieper,
in agreement with experiment, and the differential cross and R. B. Wiringa, 1997, Phys. Rev. E 56, 1720.
section at the second, third, and fourth maximum also Rutherford, E., J. Chadwick, and C. D. Ellis, 1930, Radiations
agree with experiment. from Radioactive Substances (Cambridge, England, Cam-
bridge University).
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Kok, V. G. J. Stoks, and J. J. de Swart, 1990, Phys. Rev. C 41, J. de Swart, 1993, Phys. Rev. C 48, 792.
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Burbidge, E. M., G. R. Burbidge, W. A. Fowler, and F. Hoyle, Physics (Oxford, Oxford University).
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Rev. Mod. Phys., Vol. 71, No. 2, Centenary 1999