ADVANCES IN NUCLEAR PHYSICS, VOLUME 24
edited by J.W. Negele and Erich Vogt, Plenum Press, 1998, pp: xv+210, ISBN 0-306-45757-1, QC173.A2545, price: $89.50 (hc).

Summary: The book consists of three articles: W.P. Alford and B.M. Spicer's "Nucleon Charge-Exchange Reactions At Intermediate Energy," J. Speth and A.W. Thomas' "Mesonic Contributions To The Spin And Flavor Structure Of The Nucleon," and K. Nagamine and M. Kamimura's "Muon Catalyzed Fusion: Interplay Between Nuclear And Atomic Physics." The book is recommended to anyone interested in nuclear physics.

Detailed Review: Alford and Spicer's article is mainly a historical review, with special emphasis for research on the Gamow-Teller (or spin-flip, isospin-flip) interaction. Some mathematical formulas and graphs are included. The parallel between allowed beta decay and nuclear charge-exchange reactions is discussed.

Speth and Thomas go from elementary ideas of deep-inelastic scattering to (among other topics) scaling violations, Sullivan processes, the convolution model, probability amplitudes in time-ordered perturbation theory (TOPT), meson-baryon form factors, spin-averaged splitting functions, the meson cloud, nucleonic sea-quark distributions, Drell-Yan processes, and mesons in protons as targets for deep-inelastic scattering. Mathematical formulas are included though complete derivations are often omitted. Tables and graphs display both theoretical and experimental results. The article concludes that "the mesonic cloud must play an important role in the structure of the nucleon," and indicates successes of the model used, such as agreement of derived valence quark structure functions with those based on observations.

Nagamine and Kamimura's article discusses unions among protons, deuterium, tritium, and helium. Much emphasis is put on the roles of muons in these fusions. Both experimental and theoretical results are considered. Derivations of mathematical formulas are often fairly detailed, so a reader can follow and check. Many graphs illustrate the text. The article considers the possibility of muon-catalyzed fusion as a source of energy, and concludes it has not yet been realized.

All three articles include many references, at least some of which are intended to make up for brevity in the articles. All articles include many acronyms which I often found unfamiliar. The index at the back of the book mentions only a few, so I made notes. My reading of the second article was helped by communications with author A.W. Thomas. I would have appreciated having the electronic mail addresses of other authors included in the book to ease contacting them for clarification.

I agree with the editors in especially recommending Nagamine and Kamimura's article to any nuclear physicist. That article seemed the most elementary, the one most suitable for someone early in his study of nuclear phenomena. I do suggest, however, checking details for such problems as apparently misplaced subscripts and discrepancies between graphs and tables.I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in nuclear research.

David P. Maroun
maround@ucfv.bc.ca