Thermal neutron capture cross-section of <Superscript>76</Superscript>Ge

The thermal neutron capture cross-sections of the ⁷⁶Ge(n,)⁷⁷Ge and the ⁷⁶Ge(n,)^77m Ge reactions have been measured by activating targets of isotopically enriched GeO₂ through cold neutrons. The -decay spectra after the -decay of ⁷⁷Ge and ^77m Ge were measured with HPGe detectors. From these spectra the cross-sections for the ⁷⁶Ge(n,) reactions were derived relative to the cross-section of ¹⁹⁷Au using the absolute emission probabilities of the observed -ray energies. The methods used in this work result in smaller systematic uncertainties than those obtained in previous experiments.     

K-forbidden allowed $ \beta$ transitions in heavy nuclei

The role of the band quantum number K in influencing the character of allowed transitions in heavy deformed nuclei is examined. The conditions for the occurrence of K -forbidden decays in this region are explored. Specific cases of “allowed” decays proceeding via K = 2 to K = 6 channels are presented to illustrate the phenomenon. The listed K = 2 transitions, which by themselves contribute over 10% of all the presently known allowed transitions for A 228 nuclei, are seen to have an average , which is clearly outside the normal range for allowed transitions. It is concluded that, wherever the -connected states can be confidently labelled using the quantum numbers, the K -forbiddenness is in general as significant as that involving the other two (spin and parity) quantum numbers.     

High-spin excitations of 81, 82, 83, 85Se : Competing single-particle and collective structures around N = 50

The ^{81, 82, 83, 85}Se nuclei have been produced as fission fragments in the fusion reaction ¹⁸O + ²⁰⁸Pb at 85MeV bombarding energy and studied with the Euroball IV array. Their high-spin level schemes have been built from the triple -ray coincidence data and - angular correlations have been analyzed in order to assign spin and parity values to many observed states. The lowest-spin states of the two-neutron and three-neutron configurations are strongly mixed with two-proton excitations among the fp orbits. On the other hand, the highest-spin states of these neutron configurations are found to remain almost pure. Neutron excitation across the N = 50 gap is observed both in ⁸³Se₄₉ and in ⁸⁵Se₅₁ .     

Lifetime measurement in 195Po

The lifetime of the 17/2⁺ yrast state in ¹⁹⁵Po has been measured using the recoil distance Doppler-shift technique to be = 43(11) ps. The lifetime was extracted from the singles -ray spectra obtained by using the recoil-decay tagging method. The present work provides more information of the coupling schemes, shapes and configuration mixing in neutron-deficient odd-mass Po nuclei.     

Spherical-separability of Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians and Pseudo- PT\mathcal{PT} -symmetry

Non-Hermitian but -symmetrized spherically-separable Dirac and Schr?dinger Hamiltonians are considered. It is observed that the descendant Hamiltonians H _r , H _θ , and H _φ play essential roles and offer some “user-feriendly” options as to which one (or ones) of them is (or are) non-Hermitian. Considering a -symmetrized H _φ , we have shown that the conventional Dirac (relativistic) and Schr?dinger (non-relativistic) energy eigenvalues are recoverable. We have also witnessed an unavoidable change in the azimuthal part of the general wavefunction. Moreover, setting a possible interaction V(θ)≠0 in the descendant Hamiltonian H _θ would manifest a change in the angular θ-dependent part of the general solution too. Whilst some -symmetrized H _φ Hamiltonians are considered, a recipe to keep the regular magnetic quantum number m, as defined in the regular traditional Hermitian settings, is suggested. Hamiltonians possess properties similar to the -symmetric ones (here the non-Hermitian -symmetric Hamiltonians) are nicknamed as pseudo- -symmetric.     

Nuclear structure of 189Tl states studied via \beta^{{+}}_{} /EC decay and laser spectroscopy of 189m+gPb

The /EC decay of ^{189m, g}Pb has been studied at the ISOLDE facility using nuclear spectroscopy and in-source laser spectroscopy. A level scheme of ¹⁸⁹Tl has been built from - coincidence relationships and information on the feeding of some excited levels of ¹⁸⁹Tl provided by the hyperfine spectra obtained from laser ionization. The half-lives of both the 13/2⁺ and 3/2^{- 189}Pb isomers have been estimated to be T _1/2 = 50±3 s and T _1/2 = 39±8 s, respectively. Calculations have been performed for different oblate and prolate nuclear deformations using an axial-rotor coupled to one-quasiparticle model, a structure has been suggested for the low-lying levels of the ¹⁸⁹Tl nucleus.     

Benford’s law and half-lives of unstable nuclei

We find that the experimental data of the -decay half-lives for 627 nuclei are in good agreement with Benford’s law, which states that the frequency of the appearance of each figure, 1-9, as the first significant digit, follows a logarithmic distribution favoring the smallest value. In order to generalize the applicability of Benford’s law, we systematically investigate the data of the total half-lives for 3177 nuclides in their ground and isomeric states, where the half-lives of many nuclei are determined by -decay and spontaneous fission. We find that they are also in excellent agreement with Benford’s law, although they are determined by different interactions such as strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions. The possible physics behind them is discussed. Moreover, Benford’s law can be used to test theoretical models or methods.     

UA(1) anomaly and $ \eta^{{\prime}}_{}$ -mass from an infrared singular quark-gluon vertex

The U _A(1) problem of QCD is inevitably tied to the infrared behaviour of quarks and gluons with its most visible effect being the -mass. A dimensional argument of Kogut and Susskind showed that the mixing of the pseudoscalar flavour-singlet mesons with gluons can provide a screening of the Goldstone pole in this channel if the full quark-quark interaction is strongly infrared singular as ∼ 1/k ⁴ . We investigate this idea using previously obtained results for the Landau gauge ghost and gluon propagator, together with recent determinations for the singular behaviour of the quark-gluon vertex. We find that, even with an infrared vanishing gluon propagator, the singular structure of the quark-gluon vertex for certain kinematics is apposite for yielding a non-zero screening mass.     

Ultra-sensitive in-beam \gamma -ray spectroscopy for nuclear astrophysics at LUNA

Ultra-sensitive in-beam -ray spectroscopy studies for nuclear astrophysics are performed at the LUNA (Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics) 400 kV accelerator, deep underground in Italy’s Gran Sasso laboratory. By virtue of a specially constructed passive shield, the laboratory -ray background for < 3 MeV at LUNA has been reduced to levels comparable to those experienced in dedicated offline underground -counting setups. The -ray background induced by an incident -beam has been studied. The data are used to evaluate the feasibility of sensitive in-beam experiments at LUNA and, by extension, at similar proposed facilities.     

Radiative corrections to pion-nucleus bremsstrahlung

We calculate the one-photon loop radiative corrections to virtual pion Compton scattering → , that subprocess which determines in the one-photon exchange approximation the pion-nucleus bremsstrahlung reaction Z → Z . Ultraviolet and infrared divergencies of the loop integrals are both treated by dimensional regularization. Analytical expressions for the O() corrections to the virtual Compton scattering amplitudes, A(s, u, Q) and B(s, u, Q) , are derived with their full dependence on the (small) photon virtuality Q from 9 classes of contributing one-loop diagrams. Infrared finiteness of these virtual radiative corrections is achieved (in the standard way) by including soft photon radiation below an energy cut-off . In the region of low center-of-mass energies, where the pion-nucleus bremsstrahlung process is used to extract the pion electric and magnetic polarizabilities, we find radiative corrections up to about -3% for = 5 MeV. Furthermore, we extend our calculation of the radiative corrections to virtual pion Compton scattering → by including the leading pion-structure effect in the form of the polarizability difference - . Our analytical results are particularly relevant for analyzing the data of the COMPASS experiment at CERN which aims at measuring the pion electric and magnetic polarizabilities with high statistics using the Primakoff effect.     

Single-pion production in pp collisions at 0.95 GeV/c (II)

The single-pion production reactions pp d , pp np and pp pp were measured at a beam momentum of 0.95GeV/c ( T _p 400 MeV) using the short version of the COSY-TOF spectrometer. The central calorimeter provided particle identification, energy determination and neutron detection in addition to time-of-flight and angle measurements from other detector parts. Thus all pion production channels were recorded with 1-4 overconstraints. The main emphasis is put on the presentation and discussion of the np channel, since the results on the other channels have already been published previously. The total and differential cross-sections obtained are compared to theoretical calculations. In contrast to the pp channel we observe in the np channel a strong influence of the excitation. In particular, the pion angular distribution exhibits a (3 cos² + 1) -dependence, typical for a pure s -channel excitation and identical to that observed in the d channel. Since the latter is understood by a s -channel resonance in the ¹ D ₂ pn partial wave, we discuss an analogous scenario for the pn channel.     

Roper resonances in chiral quark models

We derive a method to calculate the multi-channel K -matrix applicable to a broad class of models in which mesons linearly couple to the quark core. The method is used to calculate pion scattering amplitudes in the energy region of low-lying P11 and P33 resonances. A good agreement with experimental data is achieved if in addition to the elastic channel we include the and N ( channels where the -meson models the correlated two-pion decay. We solve the integral equation for the K -matrix in the approximation of separable kernels; it yields a sizable increase of the widths of the (1232) and the N(1440) resonances compared to the bare quark values.     

Dirac magnetic monopole production from photon fusion in proton collisions

We calculate the lowest-order cross-section for Dirac magnetic monopole production from photon fusion ( in p collisions at = 1.96 TeV, pp collisions at = 14 TeV, and we compare with Drell-Yan (DY) production. We find the total cross-section is comparable with DY at = 1.96 TeV and dominates DY by a factor > 50 at = 14 TeV. We conclude that both the and DY processes allow for a monopole mass limit m > 370 GeV based upon the null results of the recent monopole search at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). We also conclude that production is the leading mechanism to be considered for direct monopole searches at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).     

Backward pion photoproduction

We present a systematic analysis of backward pion photoproduction for the reactions p p and p n . Regge phenomenology is applied at invariant collision energies above 3GeV in order to fix the reaction amplitude. A comparision with older data on - and -photoproduction at = 180^° indicates that the high-energy limit as given by the Regge calculation could be reached possibly at energies of around ≃ 3 GeV. In the energy region of 2.5 GeV, covered by the new measurements of p p differential cross-sections at large angles at ELSA, JLab, and LEPS, we see no clear signal for a convergence towards the Regge results. The baryon trajectories obtained in our analysis are in good agreement with those given by the spectrum of excited baryons.     

Improved bounds on the radius and curvature of the K$ \pi$ scalar form factor and implications to low-energy theorems

We obtain stringent bounds in the 〈r ² -c plane where these are the scalar radius and the curvature parameters of the scalar K form factor, respectively, using analyticity and dispersion relation constraints, the knowledge of the form factor from the well-known Callan-Treiman point , as well as at , which we call the second Callan-Treiman point. The central values of these parameters from a recent determination are accomodated in the allowed region provided the higher loop corrections to the value of the form factor at the second Callan-Treiman point reduce the one-loop result by about 3% with . Such a variation in magnitude at the second Callan-Treiman point yields 0.12 fm² 〈r ² 0.21 fm²and 0.56 GeV^-4 c 1.47 GeV^-4and a strong correlation between them. A smaller value of shifts both bounds to lower values.     

Alpha-gamma decay studies of 255No

The decay of ²⁵⁵No was investigated by means of α-γ spectroscopy. The isotope was produced in the reactions ²⁰⁸Pb(⁴⁸Ca, n)²⁵⁵No, , and $²³⁸U(²²Ne, 5n)²⁵⁵No$. Levels of the daughter nucleus ²⁵¹Fm were assigned by α-γ coincidence measurements and on the basis of systematics. Level energies were determined precisely using measured γ-rays. The results are compared with the known level schemes of the lighter isotones ²⁴⁷Cm and ²⁴⁹Cf as well as with data for ²⁵³No.     

Intermediate energy elastic scattering of protons on 24Mg in the $ \alpha$ -cluster model with dispersion

The -cluster model with dispersion has been developed for the case of the ²⁴Mg nucleus. The ²⁴Mg nucleus is considered as composed of the core ( ¹⁶O nucleus) and two -clusters that form a dumbbell configuration and are arranged with the most probability inside the core. In the calculations the -cluster structure of the core has been taken into account. On the basis of the multiple diffraction scattering theory the differential cross-section and the polarization observables for the elastic p - ²⁴Mg scattering at 800 and 250MeV have been calculated. The results obtained are in agreement with the existing experimental data.     

Dual parametrization of GPDs versus the double distribution Ansatz

We establish a link between the dual parametrization of GPDs and a popular parametrization based on the double distribution Ansatz, which is in prevalent use in phenomenological applications. We compute several first forward-like functions that express the double distribution Ansatz for GPDs in the framework of the dual parametrization and show that these forward-like functions make the dominant contribution into the GPD quintessence function. We also argue that the forward-like functions with 1 contribute to the leading singular small-x_Bj behavior of the imaginary part of DVCS amplitude. This makes the small-x_Bj behavior of independent of the asymptotic behavior of PDFs. Assuming analyticity of Mellin moments of GPDs in the Mellin space we are able to fix the value of the D -form factor in terms of the GPD quintessence function N(x, t) and the forward-like function Q ₀(x, t) .     

Neutral pion photoproduction at high energies

A Regge model with absorptive corrections is employed in a global analysis of the world data on the reactions p p and n n for photon energies from 3 to 18GeV. In this region resonance contributions are expected to be negligible so that the available experimental information on differential cross-sections and single and double polarization observables at - t 2 GeV²allows us to determine the reaction amplitude reliably. The model amplitude is then used to predict observables for photon energies below 3GeV. A detailed comparison with recent data from the CLAS and CB-ELSA Collaborations in that energy region is presented. Furthermore, the prospects for determining the radiative decay width via the Primakoff effect from the reaction p p are explored.