Preface

Summary

In 1974 a new model, the interacting boson model, was introduced in an attempt to describe in a unified way collective properties of nuclei. This model is rooted in the spherical shell model developed by Jensen and Mayer (Haxel, Jensen and Suess, 1949; Mayer, 1949), which is the fundamental model for describing properties of nuclei, but in addition has properties similar, and in many cases identical, to the collective model developed by Bohr and Mottelson (Rainwater, 1950; Bohr, 1951, 1952; Bohr and Mottelson, 1953) and based on the concept of shape variables. Since 1974, the interacting boson model has been the subject of many investigations and it has been extended to cover most aspects of nuclear structure. In this book, which is intended to be the first in a series of three, we give an account of some properties of the interacting boson model.

We have particularly in mind here two purposes. First, we want to present the mathematical technique used to analyze the structure of the model. This, which could go under the general name of boson calculus, is potentially of interest to a large number of researchers, since the same technique can be used (and has been used) to describe other physical systems, such as molecular structures. The mathematical framework of the model is discussed in detail in Part I, which is the part of most interest for non-nuclear physicists.