A careful and objective analysis is made of the available experimental observations which claim evidence for the existence of a shoulder in the spectrum of the diffuse cosmic gamma rays in the energy range of 1–40 MeV. In this, special cognisance is taken of the experimental data and theoretical calculations of the Bombay Group. These considerations cast serious doubts on the reliability of the high flux values obtained by many experimenters in this energy region emphasizing thereby the need for great caution in interpreting the shoulder as due to cosmological effects with far reaching implications.

Starting from a definition of the localisation-delocalisation of electronic, wavefunctions in disordered systems based on the nature of the disordered spectrum, a delocalisation criterion identical to that of Abou-Chacraet al is recovered. The new derivation on provides a very clear picture of the mechanism of delocalisation and brings out its incompatibility with the normalisability of wavefunctions at the transition.

The phenomenon of the disappearance of the shell effects on the thermodynamic properties of nuclei with increasing excitation energy has been examined quantitatively on the basis of numerical calculations based on realistic shell model single particle level schemes. It is shown that shell effects disappear at moderate excitation energies and above these excitation energies, the thermodynamic behaviour of the nucleus is identical to that of the equivalent liquid drop model nucleus. Implications of the above feature in the interpretation of some aspects of fission of excited nuclei such as mass-asymmetry and angular anisotropy are examined. The relationship of the phenomenon of washing out of shell effects at high excitation energies with the temperature smearing method of determining ground state shell correction energies is also outlined.

A kinematical basis is proposed for form factors of the power type associated with multiple derivative couplings, on the basis of a Lorentz contraction effect on the external momenta involved in the transition matrix elements for mesons and baryons as appropriate quark composites. The argument (due to Licht and Pagnamenta) which applies separately to the Breit and c.m. frames for a decay matrix element provides a formal theoretical justification for thead hoc power form factors used by the Delhi group in a series of applications to hadronic processes over the past few years. The radius of interaction finds a natural place in this description simply from dimensional considerations, and its rather small magnitude, less than 0.5F, estimated fromfits to the data indicates a relatively small role played by structure effects. The Breit frame form factors, which work somewhat better than the c.m. frame ones (effectively used in the earlier studies), give a rather impressive sets of fits to the baryon decays in the (L + 1) wave (consistently for both vertical and horizontal) and the (L − 1) wave (mainly horizontal). The mesonic decays, the data for which are available mostly for the (L + 1) wave, are also fitted with an equal degree of consistency without any extra assumptions.

Hartree-Fock wave functions obtained from realistic nucleon-nucleon interaction are employed to calculate cross-sections for the reaction¹²C(π⁺,p)¹¹C(g.s.). These wave functions take into account central correlations between nucleons inside the nucleus. This itself is found to change the cross-section by more than an order of magnitude. The incoming pion is represented by a plane wave while proton-distortion is taken into account in the high-energy or semi-classical approximation, thereby determining the proton optical well parameters. These values agree well with those obtained by more conventional methods. Variation of the cross-section with the oscillator well parameter is also studied. Calculations have been made using the one-nucleon mechanism for the pion-absorption process.

An investigation on the interaction of high energy muons, associated with EAS and having energies greater than several hundred GeV, has been carried out at Kolar Gold Fields. A visual detector consisting of neon flash tube hodoscope has been used together with a scintillator detector to observe the muons and accompanying showers at the underground level.

It has been found that nearly 90% of the showers observed at the underground level are generated in course of pure electromagnetic interactions of the muons with the matter traversed by them. The observed number of the showers is found to be consistent with the expected number calculated using the cross-sections for knock-on, bremsstrahlung and direct pair production processes.

Rest of the observed showers do not appear to fit in the pure electromagnetic interaction scheme. Various possible production processes for these events have been discussed. Considering these events to be due to photonuclear interaction of muons in the rock, the observed number leads to a production cross-sectionσ_μ(≳25 GeV) ⋍(1.6±0.75)10⁻²⁹ cm²/nucl.