Pre-equilibrium nuclear reactions: An introduction to classical and quantum-mechanical models

In studies of light-ion induced nuclear reactions one distinguishes three different mechanisms: direct, compound and pre-equilibrium nuclear reactions. These reaction processes can be subdivided according to time scales or, equivalently, the number of intranuclear collisions taking place before emission. Furthermore, each mechanism preferably excites certain parts of the nuclear level spectrum and is characterized by different types of angular distributions. This presentation includes description of the classical, exciton model, semi-classical models, with some selected results, and quantum mechanical models. A survey of classical versus quantum-mechanical pre-equilibrium reaction theory is presented including practical applications