TABLE OF CONTENTS T.F nyes
Institute of Nuclear Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Debrecen, Hungary
In this chapter four topics are treated. 1. Fundamental constituents and interactions of matter, nuclear forces. 2. Properties of nuclei. 3. Single particle and collective motion, nuclear models. 4. Nuclear transitions, ?, ?, and ? decay.
According to our present knowledge, the fundamental constituents of matter are quarks and leptons. Both quarks and leptons are pointlike and structureless on a scale of 10 ?17 m. These particles may interact with each other via four apparently different fundamental interactions: strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational interactions. Any interaction is mediated by the exchange of specific interaction quanta. Some of the most important properties of quarks and leptons are summarized in TABLE 1. The table contains also the properties of quanta of electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions [1]. The characteristic scale for gluons is <0.1 fm (i.e., <10 ? 16 m).
