APS Division of Nuclear Physics

The Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP) is comprised of scientists and educators who study fundamental problems related to the nature of matter. Nuclear scientists probe the properties of nuclei and nuclear matter and the interactions of their ultimate constituents — quarks and gluons. They also address interdisciplinary questions: the basis of fundamental symmetries in nature, the first moments of the universe, the origin of the elements, education, and the application of nuclei and nuclear techniques to meet societal needs including medical diagnoses and treatment, energy, advanced materials, and Homeland Security. DNP interests have significant overlap with other APS Divisions, Topical Groups and Forums.

Short-Range Nucleon-Nucleon Correlations

The structure of nuclei is determined by the nature of the strong force: strong repulsion at short distances and strong attraction at moderate distances. This force makes the nucleus a fairly dilute system and allowed calculations that treated the nucleus as a collection of hard objects in a mean field to describe many of the properties of nuclear matter. Of course, this simple picture has limitations, as the nucleons should be thought of as waves that can strongly overlap for short periods of time. These states of strongly overlapping wave functions are commonly referred to as nucleon-nucleon short-range correlations, and recent inclusive experiments have suggested that about 20% of all nucleons in carbon are in such a state at any given time. More