Scattering of high-energy electrons from nuclear and nucleon targets essentially provides a microscope for examining the structure of these tiny objects. This 2001 book examines the motivation for electron scattering, develops the theoretical analysis of the process and summarises present experimental capabilities. Suitable for advanced undergraduates, graduates and researchers.

A comprehensive summary of experiments on Compton scattering from the proton and neutron performed at the electron accelerator MAMI. The experiments cover a photon energy range from 30 MeV to 500 MeV. The reader is introduced to the theoretical concepts of Compton scattering, followed by a description of the experiments on the proton, their analysis and results.

Electron Scattering from Complex Nuclei, Part B is a three-chapter text that explores the excitation of the nucleus to bound levels and the nucleus breakup through particle emission from continuum states. The first chapter discusses the inelastic scattering to nuclear levels, the giant resonances, the concepts of radiative corrections, and the phase shift analysis for inelastic scattering. The subsequent chapter concerns the quasi-elastic continuum and the observations of the nuclear decay products. The last chapter presents special topics on electron scattering, such as dispersion and exchange corrections, sum rules, and isospin effects. Physicists, researchers, and graduate students will find this book invaluable.

Electron Scattering from Complex Nuclei, Part A covers the historical phases of experimental development in elastic and inelastic electron scattering. This five-chapter text presents the logical development of the underlying theory of electron scattering. After briefly discussing the history of electron scattering from nuclei, this book goes on describing the theory of elastic scattering from a point nucleus, both with Born approximation and the accurate solution of the Dirac equation, as well as the corresponding experiments. The following chapter considers the analysis of nuclear charge distributions experiments using Born cross section and phase-shift methods. A chapter is devoted to the complete elastic and inelastic Born theory. This chapter also deals with the derivation of a theorem on the general form of the electron-nucleus scattering cross section, with an emphasis on the influence of the neglected transverse interaction on the cross section. The last chapter presents the status of elastic scattering along with some topics in muonic atoms that also determine nuclear charge densities. This book will be of great benefit to physicists, researchers, and graduate students who are interested in nuclear structure problems.

This book summarizes the considerable progress recently achieved in the understanding of nucleon and nuclear structure by using high energy electrons as a probe. A collection of papers discusses in detail the new frontiers of this field. Experimental and theoretical articles cover topics such as the structure of the nucleon, nucleon distributions, many-body correlations, non-nucleonic degrees of freedom and few-body systems. This book is an up-to-date introduction to the research planned with continuous beam electron accelerators.

The possible existence of a potential interaction between neutron and electron has been investigated by examining the asymmetry of thermal neutron scattering from xenon. It has been found that the scattering in the center-of-gravity system shows exceedingly little asymmetry. By assuming an interaction of a range equal to the classical electron radius, the depth of the potential well has been found to be 300℗±5000 ev. This result is compared with estimates based on the mesotron theory according to which the depth should be 12000 ev. It is concluded that the interaction is not larger than that expected from the mesotron theory; that, however, no definite contradiction of the mesotron theory can be drawn at present, partly because of the possibility that the experimental error may have been understimated, and partly because of the indefiniteness of the theories which makes the theoretical estimate uncertain.