Lecturer: Prof. Vladimir Zelevinsky
Affiliation: Michigan State University
Abstract:
Atomic nuclei belong to the class of mesoscopic quantum systems with strong interaction between constituents. In mesoscopic systems, the presence of statistical features coexists with the opportunities to study, theoretically and experimentally, individual quantum states. Statistical aspects include chaotic regularities of spectra, wave functions and reaction amplitudes, leading to thermalization without any external heat bath. Strong interactions mix simple particle states creating complicated manybody functions with characteristic signatures of quantum chaos. This allows to treat the system statistically using thermodynamic concepts and obtain physical results avoiding the diagonalization of prohibitively huge Hamiltonian matrices. The variation of the Hamiltonian displays the special role of certain matrix elements responsible for collective phenomena on the background of chaos driven by numerous collision-like interactions. Some theoretical problems are still waiting for their solution.
Additional details of the upcoming Israeli
Joint Nuclear Physics' Seminars can be
found on the following link.