This thesis reports on investigations of a specific collective mode of nuclear vibration, the isoscalar giant monopole resonance (ISGMR), the nuclear "breathing mode", the energy of which is directly related to a fundamental property of nuclei-the nuclear incompressibility. The alpha inelastic scattering experiments reported in this thesis have been critical to answering some fundamental questions about nuclear incompressibility and the symmetry energy, quantities that are crucial to our understanding of a number of phenomena in nuclear physics and astrophysics, including collective excitations in nuclei, radii of neutron stars, and the nature of stellar collapse and supernova explosions. The work described included three sets of experiments and subsequent sophisticated data analysis, both leading to results that have been welcomed by the community and recognised as important contributions to the field.

Contenu
Introduction.- Nuclear Matter Incompressibility.- Giant Resonances.- Compressional Mode GRs and Nuclear Incompressibility.- Experimental Tools to Study ISGMR.- Motivation.- Theory of Collective Motion.- Introduction.- Distorted-Wave Born Approximation (DWBA).- Sum rules.- Transition Densities and Transition Potentials.- Contribution from the Isovector Giant Dipole Resonance.- Experimental Overview and Data Reduction.- Overview.- Experimental Setup.- Detector Setup.- Data Acquisition System.- Experimental Specifications.- Data Reduction.- Data Analysis.- Overview.- Optical Model.- Global Optical Model Analysis.- Multipole Decomposition Analysis.- Results and Discussion.- Overview.- E-309.- E-340.- E.318.- Summary and Current Status.