Conveners
R-DNP-1 : Best student competition
- Corina Andreoiu (Simon Fraser University)
At TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre, the TIGRESS Integrated Plunger and its configurable detector systems have been used for charged-particle tagging and light-ion identification in Doppler-shift lifetime measurements employing gamma-ray spectroscopy using TIGRESS, an array of HPGe detectors. An experiment using these devices to measure the lifetime of the first $2^+$ ($2^{+}_{1}$)...
The universe, shortly after the Big Bang, was at temperatures much higher than the confinement scale of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and was filled by a plasma of quarks and gluons (QGP). We can now study the properties of the QGP at major experimental facilities such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC, New York, USA) or the Large Hadron Collider (LHC, CERN, Switzerland) by colliding...
The study of neutron rich nuclei far from the valley of stability has become an increasingly important field of research within nuclear physics. One of the decay mechanisms that opens when the decay $Q$ value becomes sufficiently large is $\beta$-delayed neutron emission. This decay mode is important when studying the astrophysical r-process as it can have a direct effect on theoretical solar...
In-beam reaction experiments performed at TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre, allow for precision measurements of nuclei far from stability. Using TIGRESS in conjunction with the TIGRESS Integrated Plunger for charged particle detection, electromagnetic transition rate studies of these nuclei can be performed. These measurements provide a probe of nuclear wavefunctions and tests of...
Gamma ray spectroscopy in the Nuclear Science Laboratory (NSL) at Simon Fraser University (SFU) is used for nuclear structure studies, neutron activation analysis, and environmental radioactivity monitoring. All non-environmental sources are produced using the in-house Thermo Fisher Scientific P-385 Neutron Generator (NG), which allows for a diverse experimental program. The current detection...
Zinc-65 ($^{65}$Zn) is a radionuclide of interest in the fields of medicine and gamma-ray spectroscopy, within which its continued use as a tracer and common calibration source necessitates increasingly-precise nuclear decay data. A $^{65}$Zn dataset was obtained as part of the KDK ("potassium decay") experiment, whose apparatus consists of an inner X-ray detector and an efficient outer...
A remarkable achievement of the relativistic heavy-ion program is the realization that relativistic fluid dynamics can describe the evolving system of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) from its early moments to a time when the growing mean-free-paths drive the system out of equilibrium. The effectiveness of this hydrodynamic description is judged by comparing calculated hadronic observables with...
The rapid neutron-capture process (r-process) is an explosive astrophysical process thought to be responsible for producing half of the elements in the universe that are heavier than iron [1]. However, theoretical calculations have yet to reproduce the observed solar abundances of nuclei. Measuring 𝛽-delayed neutron emission probabilities and neutron-capture rates of neutron-rich nuclei can...
High-precision measurements of the $ft$ values for superallowed Fermi beta decays between 0$^+$ isobaric analogue states have provided invaluable probes of the Standard Model description of the electroweak interaction. Theoretical corrections must be applied to the experimentally determined $ft$ values obtained from precise measurements of the half-lives, branching ratios, and $Q$ values of...
