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UrduJefferson Lab has dedicated the first particle accelerator cryomodule built with niobium-tin components. The quarter cryomodule is the first designed and tested for accelerating an electron beam to 10 MeV or greater energies and marks a major milestone toward the next era of SRF particle accelerators.
Tag: Nuclear Physics
From Liberal Arts to Leadership in Nuclear Physics
Mark Kevin Jones is a true Renaissance man in nuclear physics. Throughout his career, he has garnered many accomplishments, and he’s even worn quite a few hats in his three decades at Jefferson Lab. Now, Jones has been recognized for his work by his peers by being named a Fellow of the American Physical Society “For scientific leadership in experimental studies of the fundamental nucleon electromagnetic form factors, including the surprising discovery of significant variation in the large momentum behavior of the proton electric form factor, and for developing new detection systems enabling the studies.”
Behind the Model: Science Inspired by Legos
Walt Akers, Jefferson Lab’s chief systems engineer for experimental nuclear physics, created a 3D-printed model of a section of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) on a short timeline ahead of the lab’s 2024 Open House. He calls it the “Lego model.”
How ‘Clean’ Does a Quantum Computing Test Facility Need to Be? PNNL Scientists Show the Way
How to keep stray radiation from “shorting” superconducting qubits; a pair of studies shows where ionizing radiation is lurking and how to banish it.
Imaging Nuclear Shapes by Smashing them to Smithereens
Scientists have demonstrated a new way to use high-energy particle smashups at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to reveal subtle details about the shapes of atomic nuclei. The method is complementary to lower energy techniques for determining nuclear structure. It will add depth to scientists’ understanding of the nuclei that make up the bulk of visible matter.
Belle II Detector Produces World’s Most Precise Measurements of Subatomic Particle Lifetimes
The new Belle II experiment recently made a world-leading measurement of the lifetime of a particular charmed baryon, a particle that is produced and decays very quickly under very high energy levels similar to the universe shortly after the Big Bang. This demonstrates the experiment’s ability to make the extremely precise measurements of the sort needed to discover physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
Honoring a Career of Outstanding Achievement
This year, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility celebrates the 40th anniversary of its founding to probe the secrets of the subatomic universe. And for 39 of those years, esteemed physicist Volker D. Burkert has been an important part of its mission. Now, Burkert is being honored for his contributions to advancements in experimental physics with the prestigious Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics. The citation reads: “For exemplary leadership in the development of high-performance instrumentation for large acceptance spectrometers that have enabled breakthroughs in fundamental nuclear physics through electroproduction measurements of exclusive processes.”
High-Voltage Gun Accelerates Electrons from Zero to 80 … Percent the Speed of Light
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have designed and tested the world’s highest voltage polarized electron gun, a key piece of technology needed for building the world’s first fully polarized Electron-Ion Collider (EIC).
Brookhaven’s Computing Center Reaches 300 Petabytes of Stored Data
The Scientific Data and Computing Center (SDCC) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory now stores more than 300 petabytes of data. That’s far more data than would be needed to store everything written by humankind since the dawn of history — or, if you prefer your media in video format, all the movies ever created.
Mapping Out Matter’s Building Blocks in 3D
Deep inside what we perceive as solid matter, the landscape is anything but stationary. The interior of the building blocks of the atom’s nucleus — particles called hadrons that most of us would recognize as protons and neutrons — are made up of a seething mixture of interacting quarks and gluons, known collectively as partons. The HadStruc collaboration has now come together to map out these partons and disentangle how they interact to form hadrons. Their latest findings were recently published in the Journal of High Energy Physics.
Four Argonne scientists receive 2024 DOE Early Career Research Awards
As winners of the 2024 U.S. Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program, four scientists from Argonne National Laboratory are each receiving an award of $550,000 a year for five years to help them answer complex questions.
Laser-Sharp Look at Spinning Electrons Sets the Stage for New Physics Discoveries
Spin is an intrinsic property of the electron. When electrons spin in the same direction at a given time, the quantity is called polarization. Understanding polarization helps examine the structure of nuclei of heavy elements. Now, nuclear physicists have measured the polarization of an electron beam more precisely than ever before.
Postdoc Takes Multipronged Approach to Muon Detection
2024 JSA Postdoctoral Prize Winner Debaditya Biswas will combine different particle identification methods with machine learning to detect muons hidden in a sea of pions.
Frontier simulations provide new insights into calcium-48’s controversial nuclear magnetic excitation
The world’s most powerful supercomputer is helping resolve conflicting research results that have puzzled scientists for more than a decade, which could also shine new light inside collapsing stars.
New Heaviest Exotic Antimatter Nucleus
Scientists studying the tracks of particles streaming from six billion collisions of atomic nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) — an “atom smasher” that recreates the conditions of the early universe — have discovered a new kind of antimatter nucleus, the heaviest ever detected.
Breaking Barriers in Scientific Discovery
A billion-billion floating point operations per second–that’s the power of exascale. The first exascale computer in the world, Frontier, resides at the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. The DOE’s Office of Science Advanced Scientific Computing Research program has worked for decades to build supercomputers that break barriers in scientific discovery.
In Neutrinos, Quantum Entanglement Leads to Shared Flavor
Neutrinos can change their identities or “flavors” when they interact. Researchers recently found that the neutrinos in a very dense environment such as a core collapse supernova can develop strong correlations through mutual interactions. This means that over time, neutrinos with different initial flavors reach a similar equilibrium flavor and energy distribution.
Yuan Ping: Then and Now / 2013 Early Career Award Winner
Yuan Ping developed a suite of measurement methods and produced data that scientists used to benchmark energy transport models. These models increase scientists’ control of fusion energy losses. The research team improved the efficiency of the energy conversion from the lasers to the final hot fuel.
Exciting the Alpha Particle
An important part of physics research is examining why theoretical calculations and experimental results sometimes don’t match. A recent physics experiment on the helium-4 nucleus and how it transitions from its basic energy state to its first excited state found evidence of a disagreement between theory and experiment. Now new calculations of the observed transition found agreement with the recent experimental results.
Chasing and Counting Mesons
Karthik Suresh’s doctoral dissertation on meson decay in the ongoing GlueX Collaboration at Jefferson Lab has just earned the prestigious 2023 Jefferson Science Associates (JSA) Thesis Prize.
Pooling Skills to Study a Slippery Particle
A combination of supercomputing and traditional techniques has allowed Jefferson Lab theorists to better describe the unstable sigma meson particle, contributing to our comprehension of the strong interaction.
Oxygen Tweaking May be Key to Accelerator Optimization
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility are exploring how adding oxygen to the surfaces of particle accelerator cavities, one of the most critical parts of an accelerator, can help scientists custom-tailor their properties for maximum efficiency and minimum cost.
Ab Initio Methods Help Scientists Make Sense of Complex Particle Collisions
New research finds that ab initio methods using effective field theory can be used to study the scattering of protons and neutrons off atomic nuclei. The research specifically examined the scattering of protons from carbon-12 and oxygen-16 at low energies.
U.S. Department of Energy Issues Request for Proposals for Contractor to Manage and Operate Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the issuance of a Request for Proposals (RFPs) for the competitive selection of a management and operating contractor for the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF).
Three Argonne postdocs invited to prestigious meeting of Nobel laureates
Three Argonne postdoc scientists have been invited to the prestigious Nobel Laureate Meetings in Lindau, Germany, where they will meet with past Nobel Prize winners in their fields.
Celebrating the legacy of Maria Goeppert Mayer
Maria Goeppert Mayer left an indelible mark on science through her groundbreaking contributions to nuclear physics. A Nuclear Structure Conference at Argonne will highlight her contributions to physics theory.
Lijuan Ruan: Then and Now / 2013 Early Career Award Winner
Lijuan Ruan is a senior physicist at Brookhaven National Lab who studies the strong force interactions in the quark-gluon plasma created at RHIC.
MOLLER Experiment Baselined and Moving Forward
The MOLLER experiment has received Critical Decision 2 “Approve Performance Baseline” and Critical Decision 3 “Approve Start of Construction” from the Department of Energy, which provides clearance to move forward with all procurements and equipment construction.
New Insights on the Role of Nucleon Exchange in Nuclear Fusion
The way protons and neutrons move between two nuclei is key to understanding the processes in low-energy nuclear fusion reactions. As the nuclei draw close enough for the nuclear forces to become effective, neutrons and protons can migrate from one nucleus to another, potentially easing the fusion process.
Precision Measurements of Radioactive Molecules for Fundamental Physics
For the first time, nuclear physicists made precision measurements of the short-lived radioactive molecule, radium monofluoride (RaF). The researchers combined ion-trapping and specialized laser systems to measure the fine details of the quantum structure of RaF. This allowed them to study the rotational energy levels of RaF and determine its laser-cooling scheme.
Promethium bound: Rare earth element’s secrets exposed
Scientists have uncovered the properties of a rare earth element that was first discovered 80 years ago at the very same laboratory, opening a new pathway for the exploration of elements critical in modern technology, from medicine to space travel.
Oppenheimer Fellows to Gain Broader View of National Labs
Two physicists at Jefferson Lab have been selected as fellows for the distinguished Oppenheimer Science and Energy Leadership Program (OSELP), considered the highest honor for leadership training among national labs.
New Method Could Explore Gluon Saturation at the Future Electron-Ion Collider
Exploring the gluon saturation in large nuclei is one of the major goals of the future Electron-Ion Collider. New research proposes a novel method to probe the onset of gluon saturation by measuring the nucleon energy-energy correlation in deep inelastic scattering. This result leads to a comprehensive approach to study the universal behavior of gluon saturation.
Theory Thesis Wins APS Dissertation Award
Zhite Yu has been awarded the 2024 J.J. and Noriko Sakurai Dissertation Award in Theoretical Particle Physics. The award was presented to Yu at the APS April Meeting in Sacramento, where he also delivered a talk about his work.
Database Supplies Recommended Key Properties for All Known Nuclei
Scientists know of more than 3,300 isotopes. Researchers have compiled experimental nuclear data for all known nuclei, including mass, quantum numbers, half-life, decay modes, and branching intensities.
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider Begins Run 24
Today marks the startup of the 24th run of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.
João Barata Awarded CERN Fellowship
João Barata, a physicist in the Nuclear Theory Group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has received a fellowship at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. In October 2024, Barata will begin the three-year-long appointment in CERN’s Department of Theoretical Physics.
Not-Quite “Magic” Oxygen-28 Observed for the First Time
According to the traditional model of nuclear shells, oxygen-28 is expected to be a doubly magic nucleus with 20 neutrons and 8 protons. However, an experiment performed at the Rare Isotope Beam Facility in Japan measured the direct decay of oxygen-28 into four neutrons and oxygen-24 and found that it is not a bound nucleus.
Teasing Strange Matter from Ordinary
Like protons and neutrons, Lambda particles consist of three quarks bound together by gluons. But unlike protons and neutrons, which contain a mixture of up and down quarks, Lambdas also contain a strange quark.
New nuclei can help shape our understanding of fundamental science on Earth and in the cosmos
In creating five new isotopes, an international research team working at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB, at Michigan State University has brought the stars closer to Earth.
Gluon Spins Align with the Proton They’re In
Scientists have new evidence that gluons have a positive spin polarization, meaning the spins of individual gluons are aligned in the same direction as the spin of the proton they are in.
Argonne National Laboratory set to play pivotal role in realizing U.S. goals for nuclear science research
The Nuclear Science Advisory Committee recently unveiled its 2023 Long Range Plan for nuclear science. Argonne National Laboratory, with its world-class nuclear physics facilities and expertise, is poised to play a pivotal role in realizing the plan.
Jefferson Lab Welcomes Next Generation of Nuclear Physicists
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility is proud to announce nine new graduate fellowships for the 2023-2024 academic year, thanks to ongoing funding from Jefferson Science Associates. These fellowships offer students a unique opportunity to collaborate with leading nuclear physicists at Jefferson Lab and pursue advanced studies at their respective universities.
Argonne and industry collaborate to shape nuclear’s future
Seven private companies demonstrate the impact of partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy and its national laboratories to advance nuclear reactor designs, fight climate change and provide secure energy to the nation.
Exploring Stellar Hydrogen Burning via Muons and Nuclei
When a muon binds with a deuteron, it forms a system with two neutrons in a process analogous to proton-proton fusion. Nuclear theorists examined this muon capture process to quantify theoretical uncertainty relevant for comparison with experimental data and to test predictions involving proton-proton fusion. The study supports ongoing efforts to enhance the accuracy of muon capture measurements and to apply the same theoretical framework to other processes.
Department of Energy Announces up to $500 Million for Basic Research to Advance the Frontiers of Science
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced up to $500 million in funding for basic research in support of DOE’s clean energy, economic, and national security goals.
Department of Energy Announces $73 Million for Basic Research to Accelerate the Transition from Discovery to Commercialization
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $73 million in funding for eleven projects which focus on the goal of accelerating the transition from discovery to commercialization of new technologies that will form the basis of future industries.
Scientists Make the First Observation of a Nucleus Decaying into Four Particles After Beta Decay
Scientists have observed a rare new radioactive decay mode for the first time. In this decay mode, oxygen-13 (with eight protons and five neutrons) decays by breaking into three helium nuclei (an atom without the surrounding electrons), a proton, and a positron (the antimatter version of an electron) following beta decay. The findings expand scientific knowledge of decay processes and the properties of the nucleus before the decay.
Argonne receives funding to use AI and machine learning for nuclear physics research
Three Argonne projects will receive funding to use AI and machine learning for nuclear physics accelerators and detectors.
Theoretical and Experimental Physics Team Up in the Search for Particle Flavor Change
Scientists recently discovered that neutrinos have mass, counter to long-held understanding. This means that neutrinos can change flavor. Now, advances in theory and experiment are helping scientists to determine whether the neutrinos’ charged counterparts—electrons, muons, and tauons—can also change flavor and how future experiments can look for those changes.