Feature Channels: Nuclear Physics

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Newswise: A Career of Chasing Particle Beams
Released: 27-Nov-2024 10:00 AM EST
A Career of Chasing Particle Beams
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

New 2024 APS Fellow Alex Bogacz has spent his career in accelerator physics solving problems. From studying complex particle beam dynamics in particle accelerators to designing next-generation machines, his almost four decades of work have recently been recognized by his peers by being named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in October 2024.

Newswise: Benchmarking CEBAF
Released: 26-Nov-2024 4:00 PM EST
Benchmarking CEBAF
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

Particle accelerator scientists have made the measurements, crunched the numbers and consolidated the data on the performance of the brightest electron accelerator for nuclear physics research. In a new study, more than 100 authors have detailed the original and current operating parameters, main systems and subsystems, and capabilities and limits of Jefferson Lab’s main particle accelerator, the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF).

Newswise: Behind the Model: Science Inspired by Legos
Released: 26-Nov-2024 7:00 AM EST
Behind the Model: Science Inspired by Legos
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

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.”

Newswise: FSU Physicists Will Study Nuclear Reactions of Stars with Support From National Science Foundation
Released: 25-Nov-2024 4:30 PM EST
FSU Physicists Will Study Nuclear Reactions of Stars with Support From National Science Foundation
Florida State University

Trillions of miles away from our planet, nuclear reactions inside exploding stars produce most of the naturally occurring elements in the universe. Here on Earth, Florida State University physicists at the John D. Fox Superconducting Accelerator Laboratory will replicate those reactions to better understand how they work and produce elements.

Newswise: Researchers Obtain the First High-Precision Mass Measurement of Aluminum-22
Released: 22-Nov-2024 3:05 PM EST
Researchers Obtain the First High-Precision Mass Measurement of Aluminum-22
Department of Energy, Office of Science

Researchers at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams made a high-precision mass measurement of aluminum-22, reaching the “proton dripline” of the nuclear chart. The project found that aluminum-22 formed a proton halo, where the last proton added is only loosely bound to the nucleus. This measurement helps scientists determine how tightly bound the atomic nuclei are as they get closer to the dripline.

Newswise: 24s: A Businesslike Name for a ‘High-Performing Machine’
Released: 22-Nov-2024 3:00 PM EST
24s: A Businesslike Name for a ‘High-Performing Machine’
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

The latest addition to the computational arsenal of Jefferson Lab is an extraordinary machine with the admittedly ordinary name of “24s.” The 24s cluster at Jefferson Lab will work to unlock the mysteries of the nucleus of the atom. It was funded by the Nuclear and Particle Physics LQCD Computing Initiative of DOE’s Office of Nuclear Physics.

Newswise: Accessing the Lesser Known Nucleon
Released: 22-Nov-2024 11:00 AM EST
Accessing the Lesser Known Nucleon
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

Protons and neutrons–known collectively as nucleons–are both the building blocks of matter, but one of these particles has received a bit more attention in certain types of nuclear physics experiments. Until now. New results published in Physical Review Letters describe a first-time direct glimpse of the internal structure of the neutron thanks to the development of a special, 10-years-in-the-making detector installed in Experimental Hall B at Jefferson Lab.

Newswise: 24-50980_Ocampo-Banner_R4_INL.gov_WEB-1450x581.jpg
Released: 21-Nov-2024 12:45 PM EST
Breaking Barriers: How a Fresh Perspective Helped Solve Challenges in Nuclear Safeguards
Idaho National Laboratory (INL)

Breaking barriers: How a fresh perspective helped solve challenges in nuclear safeguards

Newswise: Adjusting Accelerators with Help from Machine Learning
Released: 18-Nov-2024 10:00 AM EST
Adjusting Accelerators with Help from Machine Learning
Department of Energy, Office of Science

Banks of computer screens stacked two and three high line the walls. The screens are covered with numbers and graphs that are unintelligible to an untrained eye. But they tell a story to the operators staffing the particle accelerator control room. The numbers describe how the accelerator is speeding up tiny particles to smash into targets or other particles.

Newswise: Scientists Gain New Insights into How Mass Is Distributed in Hadrons
Released: 14-Nov-2024 5:20 PM EST
Scientists Gain New Insights into How Mass Is Distributed in Hadrons
Department of Energy, Office of Science

The trace anomaly is one of the quantities that encodes the energy and momentum of particles built from quarks. Scientists believe the trace anomaly is crucial for keeping quarks bonded in subatomic particles. In this study, scientists calculated the trace anomaly for nucleons and pions. The calculations show that in the pion, the mass distribution is similar to the charge distribution of the neutron and in the nucleon, the mass distribution is similar to the charge distribution of the proton.

Newswise: How ‘Clean’ Does a Quantum Computing Test Facility Need to Be? PNNL Scientists Show the Way
Released: 13-Nov-2024 9:50 AM EST
How ‘Clean’ Does a Quantum Computing Test Facility Need to Be? PNNL Scientists Show the Way
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

How to keep stray radiation from “shorting” superconducting qubits; a pair of studies shows where ionizing radiation is lurking and how to banish it.

Newswise: ‘Inside the Box' Look at Excited Hadrons Could Help Solve Mystery of Particle X(3872)
Released: 12-Nov-2024 3:15 PM EST
‘Inside the Box' Look at Excited Hadrons Could Help Solve Mystery of Particle X(3872)
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

So-called “XYZ states” defy the standard picture of particle behavior and have given rise to several attempts to understand their nature.

Newswise: Forging a Mathematical Path to Hybrid Mesons
Released: 7-Nov-2024 9:45 AM EST
Forging a Mathematical Path to Hybrid Mesons
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

New 2024 American Physical Society Fellow Jozef Dudek is pursuing theoretical descriptions of exotic hadrons, a yet-untallied group of short-lived subatomic cousins of the proton and neutron, those more familiar atomic building blocks.

Released: 6-Nov-2024 3:00 PM EST
Scientists Calculate Predictions for Meson Measurements
Brookhaven National Laboratory

Nuclear physics theorists have demonstrated that complex calculations run on supercomputers can accurately predict the distribution of electric charges in mesons, particles made of a quark and an antiquark. The calculations also help validate a method that will be used to make predictions for and analyze data from high-energy experiments at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

3-Nov-2024 11:00 AM EST
Imaging Nuclear Shapes by Smashing Them to Smithereens
Brookhaven National Laboratory

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.

Newswise: Belle II Detector Produces World’s Most Precise Measurements of Subatomic Particle Lifetimes
Released: 4-Nov-2024 9:20 AM EST
Belle II Detector Produces World’s Most Precise Measurements of Subatomic Particle Lifetimes
Department of Energy, Office of Science

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.

Newswise: Researchers Use Summit to Track Down Nuclear Fission’s Elusive Scission Neutron
Released: 25-Oct-2024 2:50 PM EDT
Researchers Use Summit to Track Down Nuclear Fission’s Elusive Scission Neutron
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Researchers from the University of Washington, Seattle, or UW, and Los Alamos National Laboratory used the Summit supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to answer one of fission’s biggest questions: What exactly happens during the nucleus’s “neck rupture” as it splits in two?

Newswise: Bridging the Gap Between Physics and Computing
Released: 24-Oct-2024 1:30 PM EDT
Bridging the Gap Between Physics and Computing
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

Jefferson Lab’s Experimental Physics Software and Computing Infrastructure (EPSCI) group develops centralized computing software that can be shared by any of the lab’s experimental halls and used for future projects.

Newswise: Honoring a Career of Outstanding Achievement
Released: 16-Oct-2024 10:00 AM EDT
Honoring a Career of Outstanding Achievement
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

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."

Newswise: Making Difficult Quantum Many-Body Calculations Possible
Released: 11-Oct-2024 3:05 PM EDT
Making Difficult Quantum Many-Body Calculations Possible
Department of Energy, Office of Science

One of the methods scientists use to study quantum many-body systems is the ab initio approach, but some ab initio methods run into severe computational problems when using realistic interactions. This study introduces wavefunction matching and uses it to perform lattice simulations with realistic interactions. This allows scientists to make calculations that were once impossible.



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