Conveners
Heavy Nuclei and Super Heavy Elements - Part 2
- Rodney Orford (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
Exploring the limits of nuclear existence is at the forefront of contemporary nuclear physics. At the GSI in Darmstadt, we have explored the limit in the region of superheavy nuclei for more than 50 years resulting in the discovery of six new elements, for example. Recently, the program has been expanded towards a comprehensive investigation of the atomic, nuclear, and chemical properties of...
The island of deformed nuclei around the Z=100, N=152 deformed shell gaps serves a stringent testing ground for nuclear models aiming to describe super-heavy nuclei. In fact, without the presence of shell corrections, these nuclei would undergo instantaneous fission. Nuclei in this region have been extensively studied using decay and in-beam spectroscopic methods. During the presentation,...
The astrophysical rapid-neutron capture process (r-process) of explosive nucleosynthesis is re- sponsible for the formation of half of the heavy nuclei above Fe [1]. Actinides are produced towards the end of this process, when the neutron flux is expected to be minimal, and it is supported also by fission processes. Given that the r-process path runs far away from the accessible species, in...
The electromagnetic dipole response of 242Pu was studied for the first time using the nuclear resonance fluorescence (NRF) method, hence with real photons. The experiment was performed at TU Darmstadt, where monoenergetic electrons are provided by the superconducting Darmstadt linear electron accelerator S-DALINAC to produce bremsstrahlung by impinging on a gold radiator target. A sample of...
