Key
questions in the field can be summarized as i) understanding of how regular and
simple patterns emerge in the intrinsic structure of nuclei ii) identifying the
degrees of freedom, which govern the dynamics of their collisions.
In this talk, after a
brief historical review, I will present recent progress in this field and will
use the Grand
Accélérateur National d'Ions Lourds (GANIL)
facility as a typical laboratory to illustrate part of the recent progress in this field. The various studies that we will discuss use
ion high intensity (~1012 particles/s) stable ion beams (12C
to 238U) up to 95 MeV/nucleon and exotic beams of nuclei (which live
for a very short time with lifetimes ranging from ~ msecs to msecs). The
intensities of these exotic beams range from a few particles/s to ~107
p/s. More recently, a new very high intensity
superconducting LINAC has also been
commissioned that will also provide
intense neutron beams. These numerous types of beams are coupled to versatile
detection facilities (active targets, powerful spectrometers, 4p charged
particle detectors, g-ray tracking detectors, etc.) built by various
international collaborations. These tools help us explore the behavior of
nuclei under various conditions of excitation energy (heating to different
temperatures), angular momentum (spinning), and isospin (different composition
in terms of neutrons and protons).
In
this talk, we will make a virtual visit of the laboratory and explore details
at the femtometer scale using the available microscopes at GANIL to address
some aspects of these key questions.