What Is the Accepted Structure of Protons and Neutrons in an Atom's Nucleus?

[jal]

What has mainstream decided is the arrangement of the protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the atom?
Lattice or cluster structures or ?
jal

 

[marlon]

Nothing, the nuclear structure is explained in terms of the interactions between neutrons and protons (coloumb force between protons and residual strong force between protons and neutrons, which holds the nucleus together). Any absolute statement on the position violates the uncertainty principle.


(residual) strong force : http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/funfor.html#c2

HINT : make sure you understand the difference between strong force and residual strong force
marlon

 

[jal]

Hi marlon!
Here is what I got from that link.
Therefore, the uncertainty principle and the Pauli exclusion principle would have to be constrained in order to be able to obtain a structured model.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/funfor.html#c2
The Strong Force
A force which can hold a nucleus together against the enormous forces of repulsion of the protons is strong indeed.
The strong force between nucleons may be considered to be a residual color force.

The liquid drop model is given at
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/liqdrop.html#c1
Liquid Drop Model of Nucleus

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/funfor.html#c2
The Weak Force
One of the four fundamental forces, the weak interaction involves the exchange of the intermediate vector bosons, the W and the Z. Since the mass of these particles is on the order of 80 GeV, the uncertainty principle dictates a range of about 10-18 meters which is about 0.1% of the diameter of a proton.
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To try and find a model for protons and neutrons it now becomes necessary to understand Quarks and how that 0.1% of the diameter of a proton could be structured to be considered to be a residual color force
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/particles/quark.html#c1
What are the competing models? What are they using as a constraint (I assume, changes to the uncertainty principle and the Pauli exclusion principle).
jal

 

[humanino]

Nothing, the nuclear structure is explained in terms of the interactions between neutrons and protons (coloumb force between protons and residual strong force between protons and neutrons, which holds the nucleus together)

We are not really done with studying the nuclear structure, even in terms of effective forces between nucleons. It is however true that we already reached an excellent level of understanding.

What remains to be done is really to understand to role of quarks and gluons in the nuclear medium. For instance, we have a good deal of hints pointing towards the fact that hadrons in the nuclear medium are not the same as free hadrons. The propagate differently. There is color transparency, nuclear shadowing, and many technical details (some of them very minute), but the mere fact that the neutron is stable inside the nucleus is already an excellent indication.

So overall, the picture is still the following (IMHO) : proton and neutrons in the nucleus are vey much alike orange and apples stacked together. Their "quantumness" is tiny enough so that we can apply semiclassical methods and get excellent results. The inherent quantum and extreme-relativistic nature of quarks and gluons inside hadrons however makes it very difficult to go beyond this simple picture, and in fact very little progress has been made since about Heisenberg was working on this problem (ok I am a bit provocative here )

 

[jal]

Hi humanino!
Maybe you or someone can steer me in another direction.
(You will probably need to help me understand the papers.)

From my understanding, and also from what you have said, what we have figured out is from high energy.
Is there a low energy approach (ground state) low temp.?
Is there any "mapping" coming out of this low energy approach?
jal

 

[humanino]

From my understanding, and also from what you have said, what we have figured out is from high energy.
Is there a low energy approach (ground state) low temp.?
Is there any "mapping" coming out of this low energy approach?

This is disturbing me.
Can you elaborate on the feeling that you have that what we have figured comes from high energy ?
What do you call high energy ?

See, there is a natural scale in QCD, the real theory of the strong interactions. It is approximately the scale corresponding to the size of hadrons, and also the scale at which the QCD coupling constant is 1 (and perturbation calculations must fail). So usually, high energy refers to an energy scale much larger than this, say several tenth of GeV at least. There, the coupling constant of QCD is smaller than 1 and perturbation calculations allow you to use QCD approximately enough. At a much smaller energy scale, say much less than 0.1 GeV, we have chiral perturbation theory making wonders.

So the issue with strongly interacting systems is really in between those two scales, where QCD perturbation calculations fail and hadron structure is manifest, aroung 1 GeV or so. This is the intermediate energy scale.

 

[jal]

You are right. I was too vague and general by saying high energy.
I was thinking of less than 0.1 GeV for low energy.
On reflecting, I get the feeling that we cannot probe into the nucleus or get any information of what is happening inside the nucleus at energy levels of less than 0.1 GeV. We do not have any tools that can probe with any accuracy. (uncertainty principle)
What I was wondering was having a “trapped” nucleus that would be probed/pocked with ? and from that it would be possible to figure out where the neutrons and protons are located or what they are doing.
jal

 

[jal]

Good Day!
A search gave me more than what I'll ever be able to learn.
Do you have any suggestions of where to start to figure out where the neutrons and protons are located or what they are doing?

I'll keep the following for "light" reading.
jal
http://www.nupecc.org/report97/report97_pre/report97_pre.html
NUCLEAR PHYSICS IN EUROPE: HIGHLIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
http://www.nupecc.org/iai2001/
Nuclear Science: Impact, Applications, Interactions
http://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.KP/anrep/anrep97/chap5.html
Collisions of Cooled and Polarized Sodium Atoms

http://www.fynu.ucl.ac.be/librairie/ocde/rapportocde/lr_oecd_vs16_2.htm
Study Group on Radioactive Nuclear Beams

http://www.phy.anl.gov/theory/ria/index.html
RIA RELATED THEORY PROGRAMS
http://ns.ph.liv.ac.uk/~mc/my_research/mass_measurements.html
Mass Measurements of Exotic Nuclei at GANIL using the CSS2 and CIME Cyclotrons
http://th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~gerland/stoecker/ger/ger.html
HYPERMATTER AND ANTIMATTER-PROPERTIES AND FORMATION IN RELATIVISTIC NUCLEAR COLLISIONS

 

[Astronuc]

On probably may wish to consider -

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/scatele.html#c1

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/scatsurv.html#c1

and related books and journal articles.


The actual atomic structure probably doesn't have a good analogy at the macroscopic level with which we are familiar. One just cannot 'see' directly a particle, but it is there and it does exert an influence, which we know from scattering experiments.

 

[marlon]

We do not have any tools that can probe with any accuracy. (uncertainty principle)

Just to be clear, constructing more accurate probes will not eliminate the uncertainty coming from the HUP. It seems that you are suggesting that the accuracy of measurement devices and the inaccuracy due to the HUP are somewhat related. THEY ARE NOT. The HUP has NOTHING to do with devices what so ever and is due to the QM nature of atomic scaled phenomena. Theoretically, we could make devices that determine the exact position of an electron with some momentum p. The point is that if we measure the same electron with same momentum p, the acquired value for the position with be again an exact number. But that number will differ from the previous position value. NOT because of the device but because of the HUP ! You see ?

marlon

 

[jal]

I’ve have gone through the light reading and I would like to add http://www.jlab.org/highlights/phys.html
Jefferson Lab

----------------
Before going into the reference papers (which cost money) presented by Jefferson Lab. I would like to get some explanations of some points.
Keep in mind that you will not see me in a lab. or behind a calculator. I’m only trying to understand what is going on. (That’s Life!)
An understanding seems to require knowing what is happening between the proton drip-line and the neutron drip-line. (Nobody knows. It’s ongoing research)
I understand that the description that are used are representing a math formula for a symmetric action.
(I’ve expanded my the vocabulary but it’s not memorized yet so I’ll make mistakes)

http://www.fynu.ucl.ac.be/librairie/ocde/rapportocde/lr_oecd_vs16_2.htm
Study Group on Radioactive Nuclear Beams
Nuclei with an excess or deficiency of neutrons relative to the valley of stability are unstable and they decay [e.g. via the emission of  particles (e- or e+)]. The existence of nuclei is limited by frontiers in three directions of the nuclear chart: i) the neutron rich limit for fixed Z; ii) the proton rich limit for fixed N; iii) the large mass limit. We have not fully reached any of these limits except for the very light nuclei. (proton drip-line, neutron drip-line)
My first question ….
What is suppose to be happening with the following description? What are they extrapolating?
http://www.nupecc.org/report97/report97_pre/report97_pre.html
NUCLEAR PHYSICS IN EUROPE: HIGHLIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Colour Transparency
Letting the mini-state evolve during its travel through different nuclei of various sizes allows an indirect but unique way to test how the squeezed mini-state goes back to its full size and complexity, i.e. how quarks inside the proton re-arrange themselves spatially to ``reconstruct'' a normal size hadron.
“travel through different nuclei of various sizes” Too general for me to understand.
Can I express “squeezed” as setting borders/contained to a “waves”. Like saying it’s not spread all over the place. Maybe …. A plaquette?
”goes back to its full size and complexity” What kind of formula does this express?

I thought that the “complexity” was cut off by inserting a number by hand. (renormalizing)
In your words …. What is he saying?
Remember that I’m thinking along the lines of structure that is separate from movement/dynamics/actions. I’m looking for the “model” that can do all that action.
I’ll be keeping/referring to http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/particles/quark.html#c1 to try to remember everything.
Quarks and Leptons are the building blocks which build up matter, i.e., they are seen as the "elementary particles". In the present standard model, there are six "flavors" of quarks. They can successfully account for all known mesons and baryons (over 200)
---------------
jal

 

[jal]

Astronuc
After finding the right words for a search I think I did very well.

humanino
Your description/explanation,

What remains to be done is really to understand to role of quarks and gluons in the nuclear medium. For instance, we have a good deal of hints pointing towards the fact that hadrons in the nuclear medium are not the same as free hadrons. The propagate differently. There is color transparency, nuclear shadowing, and many technical details (some of them very minute), but the mere fact that the neutron is stable inside the nucleus is already an excellent indication.

So overall, the picture is still the following (IMHO) : proton and neutrons in the nucleus are vey much alike orange and apples stacked together. Their "quantumness" is tiny enough so that we can apply semiclassical methods and get excellent results. The inherent quantum and extreme-relativistic nature of quarks and gluons inside hadrons however makes it very difficult to go beyond this simple picture, and in fact very little progress has been made since about Heisenberg was working on this problem (ok I am a bit provocative here )

Now, I think I understand what you said.
I wrote down dozens of questions as I was doing my search.
They were all the wrong questions to ask.

Inside the nucleous is the standard model.(a concept) It's a relic of pre-computer days.
How don’t know how anyone can answer any question from someone who does not know the Parton Model, which seems to be the working tool.
http://www.phys.psu.edu/~cteq/handbook/v1.1/handbook.pdf
Handbook of perturbative QCD

p.158 The parton distributions are determined with much more precision than before.
On the other hand, these analyses also are calling into question, for the first time, the ultimate consistency of the existing theoretical framework with all existing experimental measurements!
(This can be regarded as testimony to the progress made in both theory and experiment – considering the fact that contradictions come with precision, and they are a necessary condition for discovering overlooked shortcomings and/or harbingers of new physics.)

I don't know the Parton Model. So I realize that I cannot even formulate a proper question.
It is no wonder that so many people are being led down the garden path and that you all have to keep trying to get rid of misconceptions.

http://www.citebase.org/abstract?id=oai%3AarXiv.org%3Ahep-ph%2F0504030
The generalized parton distributions, introduced nearly a decade ago, have emerged as a universal tool to describe hadrons in terms of quark and gluonic degrees of freedom
The ultimate goal of the GPD approach is to provide a three-dimensional spatial picture of the nucleon, direct measurement of the quark orbital angular momentum, and various inter- and multi-parton correlations.

HAS generalized parton distributions (GPD) PUBLISHED THEIR “three-dimensional spatial picture”?
--------------

I did find a nice conceptual picture of the proton
http://focus.aps.org/story/v12/st5
How the Proton Got its Spin
-------------
Maybe one question can be answered
What is a sea of gluons?
---------------------
jal

 

[damgo]

1) The gluon (or quark) "sea" is the "cloud" of virtual gluons (quarks) and their antiparticles that "exist" inside the nucleon. You can think of them as a sea of particles constantly popping in and out of existence, if you want. Often when you scatter a probe particle off of a nucleon, it doesn't hit one of the physical quarks "making up" the nucleon -- these are called the valence quarks -- but instead one of these temporary quarks or gluons.

2) Keep in mind there's a big difference here between nucleon structure and the nuclear structure. The nucleon -- a proton or neutron -- is a strongly-coupled, very "quantum" object. This is what people use PDFs, sea quarks/gluons, etc. to talk about. The nucleus, on the other hand, can be rather well-described as humanino said semiclassically: as a bunch of protons and neutrons coupled together. You still have to talk about the nuclear wavefunction, but you can do decently well without introducing seas of virtual particles, etc.

----

Typically, parton distribution functions are given in terms of the fractional momentum carried at a given collision energy (actually momentum transferred). This is the quantity most relevant to experiment.

You would have to be careful in transforming this into a spatial picture. Keep in mind that the quantum world is odd, and in a very real way it doesn't make sense to ask "how are the partons distributed inside the nucleon" without specifying how you intend to measure those partons. Different ways of measuring give different results.

To put it a different way, it's simply *not the case* that you can imagine the nucleon as a particular physical arrangement of quarks & gluons, not at all. It's a strongly-coupled QFT bound state, and so you would have to specify the state of all the quantum fields that make it up.

It's not even the case that you can imagine even the *nucleus* as a physical arrangement of protons an neutrons. As I said above, you do get a decent picture by thinking of the nucleus as made up of a fixed # of protons and neutrons. But the nucleus is still a quantum object, and so we have to specify it in terms of its wavefunction. This is actually relatively straightforward, and gives a good broad-based picture of nuclear structure. But again it doesn't correspond to a simple physical arrangement of protons and neutrons; instead you get something a little like the orbitals that describe the atom's "shape."

 

[jal]

Hi damgo!

The gluon (or quark) "sea" is the "cloud" of virtual gluons (quarks) and their antiparticles that "exist" inside the nucleon.

You say "inside the nucleon". Is that because that is the only place that we have reactions that we can input into the formulas?
Would it be speculation or experimental evidence to say that the sea is everywhere?

You would have to be careful in transforming this into a spatial picture. Keep in mind that the quantum world is odd, and in a very real way it doesn't make sense to ask "how are the partons distributed inside the nucleon" without specifying how you intend to measure those partons. Different ways of measuring give different results.

Are there ways of producing "a spatial picture" within those constraits?
What about the picture that I found of the proton? Is that one of the quantum possibilities?
http://focus.aps.org/story/v12/st5
How the Proton Got its Spin
------------
jal

 

[damgo]

Hi jal!

Hi damgo!

You say "inside the nucleon". Is that because that is the only place that we have reactions that we can input into the formulas?
Would it be speculation or experimental evidence to say that the sea is everywhere?

Just terminology. The gluon/quark "sea" that is everywhere is typically called the QCD vacuum. When you talk about sea quarks people assume you mean inside some strongly-coupled composite particle.

Are there ways of producing "a spatial picture" within those constraits?
What about the picture that I found of the proton? Is that one of the quantum possibilities?

Sure... there are lots of them, that's the problem. :)

Looking at that paper, it's not clear to me exactly what they're doing, but the general idea is clear. Roughly the thing to do is take the momentum-parameterized information on the structure -- the pdfs or the form factors -- and Fourier transform it to get position information.

Keep in mind that the picture shown in that article is just one of an infinite series of pictures: you get a different picture for every value of parton momentum. And, of course, that's just one way of coming up with spatial visualization information; I've seen several. It's better to think of these things as more of "visualization tools" to help find pretty representations of the complex underlying reality, rather than as anyone of them being a true picture of how things "look."

 

[jal]

damgo!
I may not have all the fact but it appear to me that "waves" and "particles" are the tools being used to find the true picture of how things "look".
Your way of expressing it would be equivalent to saying, "Forget it. There isn't a structure/picture."
I do not support "a complex underlying reality" that we cannot figure out.
I go along with quantization/discrete to a minimum scale. That scale is now being investigated.
jal

 

[damgo]

I guess I may not have been clear. I'm not saying that there isn't an underlying reality. I'm saying that the picture of the nucleus of being made up of particular components existing in well-defined positions -- that picture is simplistic and wrong. Quantum mechanics gives us an underlying picture, but it's a wavefunction, not an ordinary picture. One can (at least in principle) specify the superposition of field configurations that we call a nucleon. As far as our current understanding goes this is the underlying reality of that nucleon. This is, however, not just a classical picture of component objects clumped together somehow. To go from the underlying quantum reality to a simple picture involves throwing out lots of information -- serious (over)simplification -- so naturally there are many ways to do it, depending on what kind of information you want to show in the simple picture.

 

[jal]

damgo!
I do not like to argue about faith and opinions.
Do you have some other facts to present that we can discuss.

You say "inside the nucleon". Is that because that is the only place that we have reactions that we can input into the formulas?
Would it be speculation or experimental evidence to say that the sea is everywhere?

You said only, "typically called the QCD vacuum".
Have you got an experiment that can be discussed?
jal

 

[marlon]

1) The gluon (or quark) "sea" is the "cloud" of virtual gluons (quarks) and their antiparticles that "exist" inside the nucleon. You can think of them as a sea of particles constantly popping in and out of existence, if you want. Often when you scatter a probe particle off of a nucleon, it doesn't hit one of the physical quarks "making up" the nucleon -- these are called the valence quarks -- but instead one of these temporary quarks or gluons.

Or in short, you just described the dynamical quarks : http://cerncourier.com/main/article/44/5/13/1/cernlatt2_6-04

Their presence also explains why the mass of a proton exceeds the sum of the three valence quarks which are bounded with each other.

marlon

 

[marlon]

You said only, "typically called the QCD vacuum".
Have you got an experiment that can be discussed?
jal

Google for the Casimir Effect and read the link i posted above on dynamical quarks.

marlon

 

[jal]

I was hoping you would produce something more relevant which would be outside the drip-line (nucleons).
Like...
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000098000004042501000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
Evidence for In-Medium Modification of the Meson at Normal Nuclear Density
(Received 8 November 2005; revised 11 September 2006; published 23 January 2007)

-----------------
http://www.citebase.org/fulltext?format=application%2Fpdf&identifier=oai%3AarXiv.org%3Anucl-ex%2F0504010
First observation of in-medium modifications of the ! meson
(Dated: June 16, 2006)
---------------
http://focus.aps.org/story/v19/st1
The Case of the Disappearing Mass
Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 042501
(issue of 26 January 2007)
According to theory, some particles have a different mass in empty space than they do in an atomic nucleus.
-------
Since these are collision experiments you would have to explain to me how these reactions are taking place outside of the nucleus.
-------------
insert:
http://cerncourier.com/main/article/44/5/13/1
… so lattices 2.5 fm across or larger are thought to be sufficient for calculations at present.
The development of higher order, "improved" discretizations of QCD has allowed calculations to be performed that give answers close to continuum QCD, with values for the lattice spacing of around 0.1 fm.
(Note: size of proton approx. 1.0 fm)
Two different values of the lattice spacing have been simulated to check discretization errors and two different volumes (2.5 and 3.5 fm across) to check finite volume errors.
(Note: this is still within the nucleus/drip-line.)

jal

 

[marlon]

I was hoping you would produce something more relevant which would be outside the drip-line (nucleons).

What do you mean ? The Casimir effect has nothing to do with an atomic nucleus what so ever since it is a vacuum effect.

marlon

 

[jal]

I'm very well aware of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
What's the experimental relationship with the "quark sea" which is at less than 0.1 fm?
jal

 

[marlon]

I'm very well aware of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
What's the experimental relationship with the "quark sea" which is at less than 0.1 fm?
jal

I do not understand that question. Sorry.

marlon

 

[jal]

The dynamics of quarks which are bound inside the neucleus has nothing to do with casmir effects.
As it is, I've mentioned two experiments which seem to indicate a change to our understanding of the standard model and nobody has anything to say about them. The standard model is a tool, just like all the others (LQG) to help us understand the universe. You cannot cherry pick and reject tools just because you want the tool to be the universe.
http://focus.aps.org/story/v19/st1
The Case of the Disappearing Mass
---------
http://www.jlab.org/highlights/phys.html
Jefferson Lab
Strange Quarks in the Proton
-----------
jal

 

[damgo]

damgo!
I do not like to argue about faith and opinions.
Do you have some other facts to present that we can discuss.

You said only, "typically called the QCD vacuum".
Have you got an experiment that can be discussed?
jal

Sure. There's a bit of a difficulty in talking about direct experiments involving the vacuum, of course, because it's the vacuum... it's not like we can turn it on and off to see what changes! But we can calculate its expected effects from some theory and look for those. jal mentioned the Casimir effect, although I don't know that the QCD contribution has been seen there. Interactions with the QCD vacuum are what cause the "running" of the strong coupling constants -- that is, the strong interactions becomes weaker as you increase the energy of your experiment. This has been observed experimentally, and matches theoretical predictions of the effect of the vacuum.

In the limit of very high energies we get something called "asymptotic freedom", where the objects inside the proton seem to be just 'floating freely' around in it (not bound at all) if you hit them hard enough. This effect is also seen, and the small corrections to it also match predictions.

see, eg http://courses.washington.edu/phys55x/558Hwi_03_soln.htm and http://www.nikhef.nl/pub/experiments/zeus/theses/wouter_verkerke/latex2html/node8.html
(esp http://courses.washington.edu/phys55x/558Hwi_03_soln_files/image098.jpg and http://www.nikhef.nl/pub/experiments/zeus/theses/wouter_verkerke/latex2html/img123.gif )

-----

Those two articles you mentionned don't change our understanding of the standard model... They are all about understanding the kinds of things we're talking about, how the nuclear environment behaves and how to calculate various properties of the nucleus.

 

[jal]

damgo!
While I look over your links you can look over this link.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0406/0406024v1.pdf
REVIEW ARTICLE
The Casimir effect: Recent controversies and Progress
Kimball A. Milton
02 june 2004
---------------
p. 61 This promises to add another bit of understanding to our knowledge of Casimir forces, knowledge that seems to grow only incrementally based on specific calculations, since a general understanding is still not at hand.
p. 62
6. Dynamical Casimir Effects
Dynamically,
photons indeed should be produced by QED by a rapidly oscillating bubble, but to produce the requisite number (106 per flash) necessitated, if not superluminal velocities at least macroscopic collapse time scales of order 10−15 s, rather than the observed 10−11 s scale [80].
-----------
The casmir effect has been observed down to 10nm. The similarity with the "quark sea" at 0.1fm is only that... a similarity. The two are different.
------------
jal

 

[marlon]

The dynamics of quarks which are bound inside the neucleus has nothing to do with casmir effects.

When did i ever say the opposite ?

You cannot cherry pick and reject tools just because you want the tool to be the universe.

Hey, all i asked for was a clarification of your question. When did i ever "cherry pick and reject" ANYTHING ?

For someone who was asking such elementary questions on ineer nucleon structure, you sure seem to have changed tone of voice quite rapidly. What is it that you want to achieve here ? There IS a reason why this thread consists out of nothing else but "you talking to yourself".

Bye.

marlon