Friday, October 7, 2005

Dr. W. Erich Ormand

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

"Nuclear Physics from Scratch"

2:00 pm in room P-148

Abstract:  The ultimate goal in nuclear physics has been to arrive at a fundamental description of the structure of nuclei and their reactions. By this, I mean can we use the fundamental two-nucleon, and now three-nucleon, interactions to derive a unified theory for all nuclear processes? For various reasons, this Holy Grail has proved to be extraordinarily difficult and, until just recently, was thought to be impossible. With the advent of new theories and powerful supercomputers, I aim to show that, at least for nuclei up to Oxygen, this goal is now realizable. Indeed, we are now discovering that the three-nucleon interaction plays a critically important role in determining the low-lying structure of nuclei. In addition, at Livermore, we have extended our theories to describe nuclear structure into a reaction formalism that will also allow, for the first time, a description of nuclear reactions, such as ⁷Be(p,γ)⁸B, based on the fundamental nuclear forces. From our, and other, efforts nationwide, the prospects for finally achieving the ultimate goal in nuclear physics is now within sight.