Unfolding the Matter of Nuclei (Proceedings of the International School of Physics)

The nucleus and its constituents are a challenging problem. The fast growing extension undergone by nuclear physics and the deepening in the understanding of the physics of the nucleus gave rise to this state-of-the-art report. The lectures collected in this book present a broad and comprehensive review of the current knowledge about nuclei. They discuss topics like searching for signatures of the quarks in nuclei with electromagnetic probes and, at much higher energies, for signatures of the quark-gluon plasma in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions. Also the attempts to obtain new nuclei in the laboratory are being discussed, as well as the central role played by nuclear physics in the development of weak interactions. Progress in all items above referred to rests on a deeper theoretical handling of the nuclear and nucleon's structure. The latter can also be addressed by relying on numerical solutions of QCD on a discrete space-time lattice. The advancement of computational capabilities has spurred a growing interest in this approach and is skilfully discussed. Furthermore this book deals with different paths toward solving non-perturbative QCD.