We expect that undergraduate students in physics departments know more or less about Yukawa theory, by hearing lectures for undergraduate students or reading books for general readers and so on. This theory triggered the investigation of nuclear force which connects nucleons in a nucleus. Many Japanese young people have longed fot Prof. Yukawa and entered universities to become researchers for theoretical physics. This subject is just the specialty of Japanese researchers. But now we know that mesons and nucleons are composites of the fundamental particles called quarks and gluons, and we get to investigate energetically the quark nuclear physics, which describes nuclei by using these fundamental particles. There exist several hundreds of particles which consists of various combinations of quarks, and these particles are called hadrons. Recently, the discovery of a new particle is reported --- it is called penta-quark and has a structure which is not included in the conventional quark model. This report triggered the vigorous investigation of the inner structure of hadrons.

Nuclear physics is the research field in which we investigate structures and reactions of nucleus and hadrons. But, in order to carry on the investigation, we need to aquire extensive knowledge, since nuclear physics is closely related to particle physics, condensed matter physics and cosmology.

In the following list we itemize more concretely the minimal requirements for admission to the nuclear physics group in the department of particle and nuclear physics in SOKENDAI.

• 5-year PhD course
  The subjects in physics which undergraduate students learn in the physics department, especially, mechanics, electro-magnetics, mathematics for physics, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and relativity.
• 3-year PhD course
  In addtion to the above subjects, field theory, hadron physics, nuclear physics and the subject which you have investigated in the master course.