The interaction of light nuclei—I

Abstract

During the last few years there has been a great increase in experimental knowledge of the properties of the lighter nuclei. Whereas the proton and the α-particle were the simplest nuclei known in 1931, we are now familiar with some properties of the neutron, the nuclei of two new isotopes of hydrogen (the diplon and triplon), and of at least on istotope of helium (He 3 ) and possibly on other (He 5 ). The discovery of the neutron has made it possible to discuss nuclear structure without explicitly mentioning electrons, whose behaviour within the nucleus cannot be dealt with by means of the present quantum mechanics. If, then, it is legitimate to treat atomic nuclei as aggregates of interacting neutrons and protons, it should be possible to build up a consistent semiquantitative theory of the light nuclei based on this assumption, the greater number of nuclei now known providing a considerable variety of observed phenomena with which to check such a theory without too great mathematical complication. In this paper this work is commenced with the consideration of the collision reactions of the nuclei, making use of the known values of their binding energies. In this way a variety of results are deduced which permit of experimental test. Before commencing with the detail of the paper it is desirable to summarize the observed phenomena connected with these nuclei which we make use of below.