Designer Nuclei - Making Atoms that Barely Exist

摘要

The physics of nuclei is not a democratic field. It has to be said, some nuclei are just more interesting than others. And some are more useful than'others, either to explain the origins of the elements, or the nature of matter itself, or for uses in medicine and other applied fields. The trick is to work out which nuclei are going to be the most important, and then go out and make them. Nuclear physicists are getting increasingly better in fabricating and characterizing short-lived nuclei with desired properties, the designer nuclei. This paper describes selected frontiers of this research. For an in-depth overview, the reader is referred to the recent report.~1