GSI experiments on synthesis and nuclear structure investigations of the heaviest nuclei

Isotopes of elements up to Z = 113 have been synthesized using medium heavy projectiles and target nuclei around doubly magic ²⁰⁸Pb. Synthesis of still heavier elements in reactions of ⁴⁸Ca projectiles with actinide target nuclei has been reported. To obtain more information about production mechanism of transfermium isotopes nuclear reaction studies including investigations of massive transfer were resumed at SHIP, GSI. Nuclear structure investigations at SHIP have been concentrated so far mainly on systematic investigations of low lying Nilsson levels in odd-mass nuclei. Recently this field has been extended to decay studies of isomeric states in nobelium nuclei at E^* > 1 MeV.     

Electromagnetic proton-neutron knockout off <Superscript>16</Superscript>O : New achievements in theory

Results for the cross-sections of the exclusive ¹⁶O(e, e'pn)¹⁴N and ¹⁶O(γ, pn)¹⁴N knockout reactions are presented and discussed in different kinematics. In comparison with earlier work, a complete treatment of the center-of-mass (CM) effects in the nuclear one-body current is considered in connection with the problem of the lack of orthogonality between initial bound and final scattering states. The effects due to CM and orthogonalization are investigated in combination with different treatments of correlations in the two-nucleon overlap function and for different parametrizations of the two-body currents. The CM effects lead in super-parallel kinematics to a dramatic increase of the ¹⁶O(e, e'pn) cross-section to the 1₂ ⁺ excited state (3.95MeV) of ¹⁴N . In all the situations considered the results are very sensitive to the treatment of correlations. A crucial role is played by tensor correlations, but also the contribution of long-range correlations is important.     

On-line production of neutron rich isotopes from uranium carbide targets

Experiments done using on-line mass separation of neutron-rich nuclei produced by 1 GeV proton beam on natural U by spallation reactions are performed to study the characteristics of different UCx targets. Special attention is devoted to reliably extract isotopic yields in case of complex decay schemes and to the valuation of release efficiency of some isotopic chains. New gamma-branching measuremet for ⁹²Rb are obtained. In addition, a formalism is developed to disantangle the contribution of β-decay in the target from direct production by fission and to provide more consistent data for the interpretation of release curves. Some results are shown for the Cs and Rb isotopic chains.     

The possibility to use ‘energy plus transmutation’ set-up for neutron production and transport benchmark studies

The set-up ‘energy plus transmutation’, consisting of a thick lead target and a natural uranium blanket, was irradiated by relativistic proton beams with the energy from 0.7 GeV up to 2 GeV. Neutron field was measured in different places of this set-up using different activation detectors. The possibilities of using the obtained data for benchmark studies are analyzed in this paper. Uncertainties of experimental data are shown and discussed. The experimental data are compared with results of simulation with MCNPX code.      

Beam normal spin asymmetries: Theory

The beam normal spin asymmetry in elastic electron-nucleon scattering is discussed. This beam normal spin asymmetry depends on the imaginary part of two-photon exchange processes between electron and nucleon, and measures the non-forward structure functions of the nucleon. After briefly reviewing the theoretical formalism, we discuss calculations in the threshold region, in the resonance region, as well as in the diffractive region, corresponding with high energy and forward angles.     

Polarized proton target for RI Beam experiments

We have constructed a polarized proton solid target system for radioactive nuclear beam experiments at the Center for Nuclear Study, the University of Tokyo. The proton polarization is based on an electron population difference in a photo-excited triplet state of pentacene molecule. The target system was completed in 2003 and applied to a RI beam experiment in 2003 and 2005 by using the projectile fragment separator, RIPS at RIKEN. The maximum polarization reached 20% under the condition of T=100 K and B=0.09 T. Overview of the polarized target and its application in physics experiments at RIPS and RIBF of RIKEN are presented.     

Laser polarization effects on K-shell Compton scattering

We study Compton scattering on the ground state of the hydrogen atom in the presence of an intense low-frequency electric field (the laser) of arbitrary polarization, for incident and scattered photons of energies around 15 keV. The adopted formalism is the nonrelativistic one developed by Voitkiv et al. [J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 36, 1907 (2003)] and applied by them for a circularly polarized laser. We explore the spectrum and the electron energy distribution in their dependence on the incident photon energy or electric field intensity, for different polarizations.     

Precision measurement of vector and tensor analyzing powers in elastic deuteron-proton scattering

High-precision vector and tensor analyzing powers of elastic deuteron-proton ( d + p) scattering have been measured at intermediate energies to investigate effects of three-nucleon forces. Angular distributions in the range of 70^°-120^° in the center-of mass frame for incident-deuteron energies E _d ^lab = 130 and 180 MeV were obtained using the RIKEN facility. The beam polarization was unambiguously determined by measuring the ^12C (d, α)^10B(2⁺) reaction at 0^°. Results of the measurements are compared with state-of-the-art three-nucleon calculations. The present modeling of nucleon-nucleon forces and its extension to the three-nucleon system is not sufficient to describe the high-precision data consistently and requires, therefore, further investigation.