Conveners
Session III
- Andreas Zilges
Session III
- Gianluca Colo
Session III
- Harald W. Griesshammer
Session III
- Michael Seimetz (CSIC - Instituto de Instrumentación para Imagen Molecular (i3M))
The quest for an optical nuclear frequency standard, the ‘nuclear clock’ based on the elusive and uniquely low-energetic ‘thorium isomer’ $^{229m}$Th, has increasingly triggered experimental and theoretical research activities in numerous groups worldwide in the last decade. Today’s most precise timekeeping is based on optical atomic clocks.However, those could potentially be outperformed by a...
Electron dynamics play a fundamental role in the behavior of matter and underpin many essential natural phenomena. Notably, these processes are also crucial to fundamental mechanisms in nuclear physics. Nuclear states can exchange energy with surrounding electrons, and nucleus–electron couplings drive a wide range of nuclear decay processes that are of significant scientific and technological...
Nuclear physics studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions. While not particularly spectacular from nuclear physics point of view, the photo-excitation of low-lying nuclear states opens the new field of nuclear quantum optics and may bring substantial progress in the field of metrology. These developments aim to exploit the fact that nuclei are very clean quantum systems,...
I will present selected results on nuclear giant and pygmy resonances at zero and finite temperatures, based on recent advancements in nuclear many-body theory [1-6]. The theory will be compactly introduced in the most general quantum field theory formalism with only the bare fermionic interaction input. A special focus will be placed on the emergent scale of the quasiparticle-vibration...
Random Matrix Theory provides a comprehensive framework for the description of complex, chaotic quantum systems [1,2]. It is exploited across various domains of physics as for instance in the statistical treatment of nuclear reactions within the Hauser-Feshbach formalism [3]. One important aspect in the practical application of Hauser-Feshbach codes is the fluctuation property of partial...
The $\gamma$-ray beam under construction at the ELI-NP facility is projected to provide users with high-energy, high-intensity and narrow bandwidth photon beams for nuclear structure studies. Two major topics that can be studied at such a facility, with the almost complete selectivity of electromagnetic probes, are high-precision measurements of nuclear $J^{P}=1^{-}$ level densities and the...
Driven by recent advances in the understanding of coexisting shapes in the even-even Ni isotopes, the structure of neighboring $^{68}$Zn was investigated using nuclear resonance fluorescence. Low-spin levels were excited using linearly polarized photon beams at energies ranging from 3 MeV to the particle threshold using the High Intensity $\gamma$-Ray Source (HI$\gamma$S). In addition,...
Over the past decade the use of twisted photons to probe the properties of atomic and nuclear systems was considered both theoretically and experimentally [1-3]. Since the angular momentum is conserved in the transitions involving the electromagnetic radiation, it is convenient to consider the states of photons with well-defined total angular momentum. Therefore in the first part we discuss...
Photon vortices are light carrying large orbital angular momentum (OAM) at the quantum level [1]. They can be described by Laguerre-Gaussian or Bessel wave functions, which are waves that are eigenstates of the total angular momentum along their propagation direction. Unlike plane-wave photons, photon vortices interact differently with materials because their OAM affects the way they transfer...
In the UVSOR synchrotron facility, gamma rays with a maximum energy of 6.6 MeV are generated by 90-degree inverse Compton scattering (ICS) between a 750 MeV electron beam and a Ti:Sa laser with a wavelength of 800 nm. The gamma rays are used for atomic-scale defect analysis using gamma-ray-induced positron annihilation spectroscopy [1] and for evaluation of polarized gamma-ray detectors. The...
The Turkish Accelerator and Radiation Laboratory (TARLA) is a user facility based on a superconducting linear accelerator designed to reach 40 MeV and 1.6 mA. TARLA will be equipped with two beamlines: one for bremsstrahlung and the other for a free-electron laser. Currently, the first accelerating section, providing 20 MeV acceleration, is completed, while the second, for 40 MeV, is under...
The major advances in laser-plasma acceleration techniques for charged particle beams have generated significant interest in the development of laser-based solutions for proton beam therapy [1, 2]. The particularities of laser-plasma accelerated ion beams that could benefit the biomedical field feature ultra-short pulse durations, down to tens of picoseconds, and high fluxes, with peak values...
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in laser-driven ion accelerators as a potential alternative to conventional accelerators [1]. A particularly promising application is the production of radionuclides relevant for medical diagnosis, such as $^{11}$C for PET imaging. Typically, the production of these nuclides is centralised at cyclotrons, reducing the number of facilities...
Interferometric X-ray imaging based on refraction (differential phase contrast) can be much more sensitive to small soft tissue lesions than conventional X-ray imaging based on absorption, being a potential game changer for medical diagnostics. In addition, because interferometry uses the transmitted radiation, the radiation dose can be reduced by imaging at higher X-ray energy, where the...
