From nuclear spectroscopy to nuclear matter

In three decades of operation of tandem accelerators, heavy-ion reactions have provided an impressive amount of information about the spectroscopic properties of individual nuclides, and have started to reach the region (of more uniform behaviour) of hot nuclear matter. Present-day facilities extend the area open for nuclear spectroscopy research up to values of angular momentum and temperature close to the stability limit, and offer exciting perspectives for the study of super-deformed and other exotic shapes. Nuclear reaction processes can now be studied with high-quality beams from energies well below the Coulomb barrier up to some tens of MeV/u (with the most powerful tandem+booster systems). Examples of elevant subjects, lying at the two extremes of this energy scale, include nuclear processes determining stellar evolution, as well as the time evolution of highly excited nuclear-matter samples. (orig.)