History of cluster structure in nuclei

This contribution focuses on the history of clustering in nuclei. Elementary alpha models treat light 4-n nuclei as systems of alpha-particles obeying Bose Einstein statistics. These models neglect the internal structure of the alphas and effects of the Pauli principle between the nucleons in the alpha clusters are taken into account by introducing a short range repulsion between the clusters. The orthogonality condition model and excluded state model treat the alphas as elementary particles, but include effects of the Pauli principle in a more microscopic way. Wheeler's resonating group method is a fully microscopic theory for calculating properties of cluster systems. It makes simplifying assumptions about the internal structure of the clusters but takes the Pauli principle explicitly. Hartree-Fock theory can be used for a microscopic theory of nuclear structure but it is not suitable for light nuclei because there is no well defined mean field. Margenau's microscopic cluster model avoids this problem by using trial wave functions which are antisymmetrized products of parametrized single particle wave functions.