Nuclear Physics for Cultural Heritage

Nuclear physics applications in medicine and energy are well known and widely reported. Less well known are the many important nuclear and related techniques used for the study, characterization, assessment and preservation of cultural heritage. There has been enormous progress in this field in recent years and the current review aims to provide the public with a popular and accessible account of this work. The Nuclear Physics Division of the EPS represents scientists from all branches of nuclear physics across Europe. One of its aims is the dissemination of knowledge about nuclear physics and its applications. This review is led by Division board member Anna Macková, Head of the Tandetron Laboratory at the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the review committee includes four other members of the nuclear physics board interested in this area: Faiçal Azaiez, Johan Nyberg, Eli Piasetzky and Douglas MacGregor. To create a truly authoritative account, the Scientific Editors have invited contributions from leading experts across Europe, and this publication is the combined result of their work. The review is extensively illustrated with important discoveries and examples from archaeology, pre-history, history, geography, culture, religion and curation, which underline the breadth and importance of this field. The large number of groups and laboratories working in the study and preservation of cultural heritage across Europe indicate the enormous effort and importance attached by society to this activity

Holographic Nuclear Physics

We analyze the phases of the Sakai-Sugimoto model at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential. Baryonic matter is represented either by 4-branes in the 8-branes or by strings stretched from the 8-branes to the horizon. We find the explicit configurations and use them to determine the phase diagram and equation of state of the model. The 4-brane configuration (nuclear matter) is always preferred to the string configuration (quark matter), and the latter is also unstable to density fluctuations. In the deconfined phase the phase diagram has three regions corresponding to the vacuum, quark-gluon plasma, and nuclear matter, with a first-order and a second-order phase transition separating the phases. We find that for a large baryon number density, and at low temperatures, the dominant phase has broken chiral symmetry. This is in qualitative agreement with studies of QCD at high density.Comment: 27 pages, 26 figures. v2: Added a comment about higher derivative corrections to the DBI action in the smeared instanton in section 2.1. v3: References added, version published in JHEP. v4: misprints correcte

Nuclear Astrophysics

Nuclear physics has a long and productive history of application to astrophysics which continues today. Advances in the accuracy and breadth of astrophysical data and theory drive the need for better experimental and theoretical understanding of the underlying nuclear physics. This paper will review some of the scenarios where nuclear physics plays an important role, including Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, neutrino production by our sun, nucleosynthesis in novae, the creation of elements heavier than iron, and neutron stars. Big-bang nucleosynthesis is concerned with the formation of elements with A <= 7 in the early Universe; the primary nuclear physics inputs required are few-nucleon reaction cross sections. The nucleosynthesis of heavier elements involves a variety of proton-, alpha-, neutron-, and photon-induced reactions, coupled with radioactive decay. The advent of radioactive ion beam facilities has opened an important new avenue for studying these processes, as many involve radioactive species. Nuclear physics also plays an important role in neutron stars: both the nuclear equation of state and cooling processes involving neutrino emission play a very important role. Recent developments and also the interplay between nuclear physics and astrophysics will be highlighted.Comment: To be published in the Proceedings of 19th Lake Louise Winter Institute (15-21 February 2004). 9 pages, 3 figure