Nuclear Physics Techniques Research Articles

HUNTER: precision massive-neutrino search based on a laser cooled atomic source

We describe a project that brings together researchers from atomic physics, nuclear physics and sub-atomic particle physics, to develop a high-precision laboratory-scale experiment able to search for very weakly coupled sterile neutrinos in the mass range extending from 5–10 keV/c 2 to several 100 keV/c 2. Observed neutrino flavor eigenstates are known to be quantum mixtures of at least three sub-eV/c 2 mass eigenstates. There is a strong theoretical belief that there may exist further neutrino mass eigenstates at higher mass levels, and which, if in the keV/c 2 mass range, might form all or part of the galactic dark matter. This has led to many searches for anomalous events in both astrophysical and particle physics experiments, and searches for distortions in beta decay spectra. The present experiment will utilize K-capture events in a population of 131Cs atoms suspended in vacuum by a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Using AMO and nuclear physics techniques, individual events will be fully reconstructed kinematically. Normally each event would be consistent with an emitted neutrino mass close to zero, but the existence of a sterile neutrino of keV/c 2 mass that mixes with the electron type neutrino produced in the decay would result in a separated population of events with non-zero reconstructed missing mass (up to the Q = 352 keV available energy of the reaction). Detailed calculations and simulations of all significant background processes have been made, in particular for scattering in the source itself, radiative K-capture, local radioactivity, cosmic ray muons, and knock-out of electrons by x-rays. A phase 1 of the experiment, under construction with funding from the W M Keck Foundation, has the potential to reach sterile neutrino mixing angles down to sin2 θ ∼ 10−4. With further upgrades this technique could be progressively improved to eventually reach much lower coupling levels ∼10−10, in particular reaching the level needed to be consistent with galactic dark matter below the astrophysical x-ray limits.

Nuclear Physics. The Societal Impact – A project for Greece?

Answers to some of the most important questions that our world is facing out, will come from interdisciplinary efforts in medicine, energy and climate. These are involving contributions from fundamental research and in particular from nuclear physics and associated techniques. From the different types of radiation used in hospitals to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), nuclear physics and its associated technologies that is accelerators and superconducting magnets are omnipresent. The development of new radioisotope production techniques, therapy of certain cancers with ions and hadron therapy or high field MRI are among the subjects undergoing rapid development. Furthermore, archaeometry and many other societal applications are also benefited from the techniques of nuclear physics. My presentation in the 6th workshop of the Hellenic Institute of Nuclear Physics (HINP) was focused on the links between fundamental research and society and was partially inspired by an article I have published in 2020 on this subject [1]. In the last part of my presentation, I have brushed up the situation concerning the construction of low energy accelerator facilities worldwide. The construction of new accelerator installations is going through a flourishing period in particular in Europe with the construction of new accelerators dedicated to fundamental research in Nuclear Physics, to neutron production and to societal applications. This favourable climate could motivate the Hellenic nuclear physics community to design a new accelerator facility dedicated to fundamental research, neutron production and to the multiple applications of nuclear physics techniques to societal problems. Its construction could benefit from European funds and technical contributions from many European countries like France or Italy.

Preface

The present volume of Journal of Physics: Conference Series collects the proceedings of contributions presented and discussed during the International Workshop DeSyT2019 (Detection Systems and Techniques in nuclear and particle physics) held from 11 to 13 September, 2019 in Messina (Italy). The scientific event was organized by:• Università degli Studi di Messina;• Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - Sez. di Catania;• Accademia Peloritana dei Pericolanti;• Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica.This event has been conceived in order to stimulate interactions and collaborations.between scientists working in different fields of science which involve particle.detection.It took place in the fascinating and suggestive library room of the Accademia Peoloritana dei Pericolanti. Library room of the Accademia Peoloritana dei Pericolanti; picture taken during a workshop talk.During the workshop more than twenty oral presentations have been discussed on the following topics:• Detectors;• Particle Identification Techniques;• Tracking Systems;• Simulation Tools and Applications;• Radiation detection and Imaging in Medical Sciences and other fields of social interest. We thank all participants for the scientific presentation, for the interesting discussions arose after each presented talk, and we hope these interactions could trigger new and interesting project in this fascinating field.We thank all participants also for their effort to prepare good papers leaving a useful trace of this scientific event.We also thank the referees of the papers for their meticulous work and constructive suggestions.Last but not least, many thanks to the staff of the Accademia Peloritana dei Pericolanti for their assistance during the workshop, and the students of University of Messina for their active participation to scientific discussions.During the preparation of this volume, our young friend and colleague Antonio Anastasi sadly passed away after a long illness. Antonio has been a brilliant researcher and during the last period dedicated himself to the measurement of muon magnetic anomaly with unusual passion and enterprise. But first of all Antonio has been an exceptional boy, always positive, deeply helpful end friendly in respect of everyone. We wish to dedicate this volume in lovely memory of Doctor Antonio Anastasi.The Editors of the DeSyT2019 Proceedings:Antonio Trifiró (University of Messina and INFN Sec. Catania) Giuseppe Mandaglio (University of Messina and INFN Sec. Catania) Marina Trimarchi (University of Messina and INFN Sec. Catania)Messina, 20th of April 2020List of Photos are available in this pdf.

International Workshop Detection Systems and Techniques in Nuclear and Particle Physics (DeSyT2019)

September 11-13, 2019, Messina (Italy)List of Editors, Organizing Committee, Scientific Secretaries, Organizing Institutions, International Advisory Committee, Local Organizing Committee, Web-Site are available in this pdf.

An introduction to the school “Rewriting Nuclear Physics Textbooks: one step forward” and future perspectives

The third edition of the school “Rewriting Nuclear Physics Textbooks: one step forward” was devoted to the societal impact of nuclear physics. One of the main beneficiaries in this area is medicine. From magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to the different types of radiation used in hospitals, nuclear physics is omnipresent. The development of new radioisotope production techniques, therapy of certain cancers with ions and hadron therapy are among the subjects undergoing rapid development. Many other fields benefit from the techniques of nuclear physics: archaeometry, the non-destructive investigation of packages or containers at customs, the study of the pollution of our environment, etc. The school was completed by the presentation of some basic research topics: the contribution of cold and ultra-cold neutrons to the study of the lifetime and electric dipole moment of the neutron, the measurement of the proton charge radius via the study of muonic atoms, the investigation of the extremes of neutron richness in nuclei, and finally, the quest for traces of 60Ni in sediments in order to study the history of supernova explosions in our universe. The number and quality of projects in a scientific field gives a measure of its future. For nuclear physics, the number of accelerators under construction in the world attests to the robustness and the future of the field. In the last part of the article, I briefly recall the specifics of nuclear physics accelerators under construction throughout the world. In my introductory presentation at the school, I covered all of these topics by pointing out the contributions of nuclear physics. This article closely follows this presentation.

Coherent gamma photon generation in a Bose–Einstein condensate of [formula omitted]Cs

We have identified a mechanism of collective nuclear de-excitation in a Bose–Einstein condensate of 135Cs atoms in their isomeric state, 135mCs, suitable for the generation of coherent gamma photons. The process described here relies on coherence transfer from the Bose–Einstein condensate to the photon field, leading to collective decay triggered by spontaneous emission of a gamma photon. The mechanism differs from single-pass amplification, which cannot occur in atomic systems due to the nuclear recoil and the associated large shift between absorption and emission lines, nor does it require the large densities necessary for standard Dicke super-radiance. This overcomes the limitations that have been hindering the production of coherent gamma photons in many systems. Therefore, we propose an approach for generation of coherent gamma rays, which relies on a combination of well established techniques of nuclear and atomic physics, and can be realized with currently available technology.

Real Time Conference 2016 Overview

This is a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science containing papers from the invited, oral, and poster presentation of the 20th Real Time Conference (RT2016). The conference was held June 6–10, 2016, at Centro Congressi Padova “A. Luciani,” Padova, Italy, and was organized by Consorzio RFX (CNR, ENEA, INFN, Università di Padova, Acciaierie Venete SpA) and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. The Real Time Conference is multidisciplinary and focuses on the latest developments in real-time techniques in high-energy physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics and astroparticle physics, nuclear fusion, medical physics, space instrumentation, nuclear power instrumentation, general radiation instrumentation, and real-time security and safety. Taking place every second year, it is sponsored by the Computer Application in Nuclear and Plasma Sciences technical committee of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society. RT2016 attracted more than 240 registrants, with a large proportion of young researchers and engineers. It had an attendance of 67 students from many countries.

Towards a novel laser-driven method of exotic nuclei extraction−acceleration for fundamental physics and technology

A combination of a petawatt laser and nuclear physics techniques can crucially facilitate the measurement of exotic nuclei properties. With numerical simulations and laser-driven experiments we show prospects for the Laser-driven Exotic Nuclei extraction–acceleration method proposed in [M. Nishiuchi et al., Phys, Plasmas 22, 033107 (2015)]: a femtosecond petawatt laser, irradiating a target bombarded by an external ion beam, extracts from the target and accelerates to few GeV highly charged short-lived heavy exotic nuclei created in the target via nuclear reactions.

Mapping the two-component atomic Fermi gas to the nuclear shell-model

The physics of a two-component cold fermi gas is now frequently addressed in laboratories. Usually this is done for large samples of tens to hundreds of thousands of particles. However, it is now possible to produce few-body systems (1-100 particles) in very tight traps where the shell structure of the external potential becomes important. A system of two-species fermionic cold atoms with an attractive zero-range interaction is analogous to a simple model of nucleus in which neutrons and protons interact only through a residual pairing interaction. In this article, we discuss how the problem of a two-component atomic fermi gas in a tight external trap can be mapped to the nuclear shell model so that readily available many-body techniques in nuclear physics, such as the Shell Model Monte Carlo (SMMC) method, can be directly applied to the study of these systems. We demonstrate an application of the SMMC method by estimating the pairing correlations in a small two-component Fermi system with moderate-to-strong short-range two-body interactions in a three-dimensional harmonic external trapping potential.

ION BEAM MATERIALS ANALYSIS AND MODIFICATIONS AT keV TO MeV ENERGIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS

The University of North Texas (UNT) Ion Beam Modification and Analysis Laboratory (IBMAL) has four particle accelerators including a National Electrostatics Corporation (NEC) 9SDH-2 3 MV tandem Pelletron, a NEC 9SH 3 MV single-ended Pelletron, and a 200 kV Cockcroft-Walton. A fourth HVEC AK 2.5 MV Van de Graaff accelerator is presently being refurbished as an educational training facility. These accelerators can produce and accelerate almost any ion in the periodic table at energies from a few keV to tens of MeV. They are used to modify materials by ion implantation and to analyze materials by numerous atomic and nuclear physics techniques. The NEC 9SH accelerator was recently installed in the IBMAL and subsequently upgraded with the addition of a capacitive-liner and terminal potential stabilization system to reduce ion energy spread and therefore improve spatial resolution of the probing ion beam to hundreds of nanometers. Research involves materials modification and synthesis by ion implantation for photonic, electronic, and magnetic applications, micro-fabrication by high energy (MeV) ion beam lithography, microanalysis of biomedical and semiconductor materials, development of highenergy ion nanoprobe focusing systems, and educational and outreach activities. An overview of the IBMAL facilities and some of the current research projects are discussed.

New parametrization of Skyrme's interaction for regularized multireference energy density functional calculations

Background: Symmetry restoration and configuration mixing in the spirit of the generator coordinate method based on energy density functionals have become widely used techniques in low-energy nuclear structure physics. Recently, it has been pointed out that these techniques are ill defined for standard Skyrme functionals, and a regularization procedure has been proposed to remove the resulting spuriosities from such calculations. This procedure imposes an integer power of the density for the density-dependent terms of the functional. At present, only dated parametrizations of the Skyrme interaction fulfill this condition.Purpose: To construct a set of parametrizations of the Skyrme energy density functional for multireference energy density functional calculations with regularization using the state-of-the-art fitting protocols.Method: The parametrizations were adjusted to reproduce ground-state properties of a selected set of doubly magic nuclei and properties of nuclear matter. Subsequently, these parameter sets were validated against properties of spherical and deformed nuclei.Results: Our parameter sets successfully reproduce the experimental binding energies and charge radii for a wide range of singly magic nuclei. Compared to the widely used SLy5 and to the SIII parametrization that has integer powers of the density, a significant improvement of the reproduction of the data is observed. Similarly, a good description of the deformation properties at $A\ensuremath{\sim}80$ was obtained.Conclusions: We have constructed new Skyrme parametrizations with integer powers of the density and validated them against a broad set of experimental data for spherical and deformed nuclei. These parametrizations are tailor-made for regularized multireference energy density functional calculations and can be used to study correlations beyond the mean field in atomic nuclei.

Data elaboration of proton beams produced by high-energy laser-generated plasmas

The proton beam production from high-energy laser-generated plasma is increasingly becoming of special interest for investigations in the field of new techniques of ion acceleration, nuclear physics, astrophysics and radiotherapy. The evolution of short-pulsed lasers, from the nanosecond to the femtosecond pulse scale, has allowed for an increase in intensity from about 1010 W/cm2 to about 1020 W/cm2 with a consequent increase of the kinetic energy of the plasma-generated ions. Thus proton energy has increased from about 100 eV at low intensity to about 100 MeV at the actual femtosecond-terawatt lasers. Although the emitted ions are multi-energetic, the use of thin hydrogenated targets and a high repetition rate can be employed to obtain high proton energy, narrow energy spread, high ion directivity and high current. Literature data indicate that the proton energy, the equivalent plasma temperature and the Coulomb acceleration increase with the pulse intensity. The use of femtosecond-terawatt lasers may produce very intense electric fields in the non-equilibrium plasma, which accelerate ions up to tens of MeV/amu. Ponderomotive forces, supersonic plasma expansion in vacuum, self-focusing effects and the high plasma temperature influence the ion plasma acceleration. Literature data can be fitted by Coulomb–Boltzmann-shifted functions which permit a separation of the thermal contribution from the Coulomb one. The latter increases at very high laser intensities to a greater extent than its thermal counterpart.

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 1977–1987

The eleventh Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS 11) Conference took place in September 2008, the Thirtieth Anniversary of the first Conference. That occurred in 1978 after discoveries with nuclear physics accelerators in 1977. Since the first Conference there have now been ten further conferences on the development and applications of what has become known as AMS. This is the accepted acronym for the use of accelerators, together with nuclear and atomic physics techniques, to enhance the performance of mass spectrometers for the detection and measurement of rare long-lived radioactive elements such as radiocarbon. This paper gives an outline of the events that led to the first conference together with a brief account of the first four conferences before the introduction of the second generation of accelerator mass spectrometers at AMS 5.

Indirect nuclear physics techniques for studying nova nucleosynthesis

Indirect nuclear physics techniques for studying nova nucleosynthesis

Particle characterization for the evaluation of the 181mTa excitation yield in millijoule laser induced plasmas

The particles (ions, atoms, x-rays and high-energy electrons) resulting from the interaction of a high repetition rate laser with a tantalum target are characterized at laser intensities ranging between 3 × 1015 and 6 × 1016 W cm−2 using plasma and nuclear physics techniques. A simple model is developed to estimate, from these data, the 181Ta isomeric state excitation yields in the ablated matter and in the remaining target. Both nuclear photoexcitation and electron inelastic scattering processes have been taken into account in the calculations. A maximum of a few 10−3 excitations per laser shot are predicted in the investigated intensity range.

Point defects in germanium: Reliable and questionable data in radiation experiments

This review paper outlines some important findings in the field of radiation-produced defects in Ge. Because of poor identification of point defects in this semiconductor the interpretation of electrical and optical data, especially those obtained in low-temperature radiation experiments, has been given by a common analogy with the known defects in Si. However, there are many examples of striking dissimilarities between defect production and annealing processes in both materials. First of all, this is true for the Frenkel pairs as primary defects in irradiated materials. Their properties and behavior in n- and p-Ge are a major focus of discussion in this review. All important data concerning the annealing stages of defects taking place below room temperature are scrutinized to accumulate reliable information on the native defects in Ge. Together with this, the data obtained with the help of such nuclear physics techniques as the Huang diffuse scattering of X-rays, γ– γ perturbed angular correlation, etc., are also briefly discussed.

Quantum Algebraic Symmetries in Nuclear and Molecular Physics

Various applications of quantum algebraic techniques in nuclear structure physics and molecular physics are briefly reviewed. Contains 81 references.

Radiocarbon analysis by accelerator mass spectrometry

An accelerator mass spectrometer combines the electric and magnetic analyzing elements of a conventional mass spectrometer with a particle accelerator. Analyses are performed on ions with energies of the order of 10 million electronvolts (MeV) allowing the use of some techniques of nuclear physics to reduce or eliminate backgrounds from molecules and isobars. Sensitivities are achieved which allow detection with high efficiency of trace atoms present in a matrix at about one part in 10 15. Some details of the operation of the instrument at the AMS laboratory at the University of Arizona will be described. Several applications of the method to detect long-lived cosmogenic isotopes (isotopes produced by interaction of cosmic rays with various materials) will be presented.

Experimental techniques in nuclear and elementary particle physics

Experimental techniques in nuclear and elementary particle physics

Tekhnika eksperimentov v yadernoi fizike i fizike elementarnykh chastits

Tekhnika eksperimentov v yadernoi fizike i fizike elementarnykh chastits