This user-friendly book on group theory introduces topics in as simple a manner as possible and then gradually develops those topics into more advanced ones, eventually building up to the current state-of-the-art. By using simple examples from physics and mathematics, the advanced topics become logical extensions of ideas already introduced. In addition to being used as a textbook, this book would also be useful as a reference guide for graduates and researchers in particle, nuclear and hadron physics.

Organized in honor of K T Hecht, Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan, for his frontier research in group theory and nuclear physics, this symposium features papers by principal researchers who have contributed to the development and use of algebraic methods in nuclear physics. The symposium aims to make a critical assessment of what has been accomplished since the seminal work of J P Elliott on the SU(3) model, and to identify significant challenges and opportunities that lie in the future. Topics include the SU(3) model and its noncompact Sp(3, R) extension, boson and fermion dynamical symmetry schemes, pseudo-spin and superdeformation, cluster model configurations and calculations, recent advances in vector coherent state theories, quark models for subnucleon degrees of freedom in nuclei, and more.

applications to the structure of atomic nuclei. The author systematically develops these models from the elementary level, through an introduction to tensor algebra, to the use of group theory in spectroscopy. The book's extensive and detailed appendix includes a large selection of useful formulae of tensor algebra and spectroscopy. The serious graduate student, as well as the professional physicist, will find this complete treatment of the shell model to be an invaluable addition to the literature.

This book is aimed at enabling the reader to obtain a working knowledge of the nuclear shell model and to understand nuclear structure within the framework of the shell model. Attention is concentrated on a coherent, self-contained exposition of the main ideas behind the model with ample illustrations to give an idea beyond formal exposition of the concepts. Since this text grew out of a course taught for advanced undergraduate and first-year graduate students in theoretical nuclear physics, the accents are on a detailed exposition of the material with step-by-step derivations rather than on a superficial description of a large number of topics. In this sense, the book differs from a number of books on theoretical nuclear physics by narrowing the subject to only the nuclear shell model. Most of the expressions used in many of the existing books treating the nuclear shell model are derived here in more detail, in a practitioner's way. Due to frequent student requests I have expanded of detail in order to take away the typical phrase " . . . after some the level simple and straightforward algebra one finds . . . ". The material could probably be treated in a one-year course (implying going through the problem sets and setting up a number of numerical studies by using the provided computer codes). The book is essentially self-contained but requires an introductory course on quantum mechanics and nuclear physics on a more general level.