No Arabic abstract
First results of study of a soft photon yield at Nuclotron (LHEP, JINR) in nucleus-nucleus collisions at 3.5 GeV per nucleon are presented. These photons are registered by an BGO electromagnetic calorimeter built by SVD-2 Collaboration. The obtained spectra confirm the excessive yield in the energy region less than 50 MeV in comparison with theoretical estimations and agree with previous experiments at high-energy interactions.
Exposure of highly deuterated materials to a low-energy (nom. 2 MeV) photon beam resulted in nuclear activity of both the parent metals of hafnium and erbium and a witness material (molybdenum) mixed with the reactants. Gamma spectral analysis of all deuterated materials, ErD2.8-C36D74-Mo and HfD2-C36D74-Mo, showed that nuclear processes had occurred as shown by unique gamma signatures. For the deuterated erbium specimens, posttest gamma spectra showed evidence of radioisotopes of erbium (163Er and 171Er) and of molybdenum (99Mo and 101Mo) and by beta decay, technetium (99mTc and 101Tc). For the deuterated hafnium specimens, posttest gamma spectra showed evidence of radioisotopes of hafnium (180mHf and 181Hf) and molybdenum (99Mo and 101Mo), and by beta decay, technetium (99mTc and 101Tc). In contrast, when either the hydrogenated or non-gas-loaded erbium or hafnium materials were exposed to the gamma flux, the gamma spectra revealed no new isotopes. Neutron activation materials showed evidence of thermal and epithermal neutrons. CR-39 solid-state nuclear track detectors showed evidence of fast neutrons with energies between 1.4 and 2.5 MeV and several instances of triple tracks, indicating greater than 10 MeV neutrons. Further study is required to determine the mechanism causing the nuclear activity
Ultra-peripheral collisions of heavy ions and protons are the energy frontier for electromagnetic interactions. Both photonuclear and two-photon collisions are studied, at collision energies that are far higher than are available elsewhere. In this review, we will discuss physics topics that can be addressed with UPCs, including nuclear shadowing and nuclear structure and searches for beyond-standard-model physics.
TeO2 bolometers have been used for many years to search for neutrinoless double beta decay in 130-Te. CUORE, a tonne-scale TeO2 detector array, recently published the most sensitive limit on the half-life, $T_{1/2}^{0 u} > 1.5 times 10^{25},$yr, which corresponds to an upper bound of $140-400$~meV on the effective Majorana mass of the neutrino. While it makes CUORE a world-leading experiment looking for neutrinoless double beta decay, it is not the only study that CUORE will contribute to in the field of nuclear and particle physics. As already done over the years with many small-scale experiments, CUORE will investigate both rare decays (such as the two-neutrino double beta decay of 130-Te and the hypothesized electron capture in 123-Te), and rare processes (e.g., dark matter and axion interactions). This paper describes some of the achievements of past experiments that used TeO2 bolometers, and perspectives for CUORE.
XENON10 is an experiment designed to directly detect particle dark matter. It is a dual phase (liquid/gas) xenon time-projection chamber with 3D position imaging. Particle interactions generate a primary scintillation signal (S1) and ionization signal (S2), which are both functions of the deposited recoil energy and the incident particle type. We present a new precision measurement of the relative scintillation yield leff and the absolute ionization yield Q_y, for nuclear recoils in xenon. A dark matter particle is expected to deposit energy by scattering from a xenon nucleus. Knowledge of leff is therefore crucial for establishing the energy threshold of the experiment; this in turn determines the sensitivity to particle dark matter. Our leff measurement is in agreement with recent theoretical predictions above 15 keV nuclear recoil energy, and the energy threshold of the measurement is 4 keV. A knowledge of the ionization yield Qy is necessary to establish the trigger threshold of the experiment. The ionization yield Qy is measured in two ways, both in agreement with previous measurements and with a factor of 10 lower energy threshold.
Thorium-229 is a unique case in nuclear physics: it presents a metastable first excited state Th-229m, just a few electronvolts above the nuclear ground state. This so-called isomer is accessible by VUV lasers, which allows transferring the amazing precision of atomic laser spectroscopy to nuclear physics. Being able to manipulate the Th-229 nuclear states at will opens up a multitude of prospects, from studies of the fundamental interactions in physics to applications as a compact and robust nuclear clock. However, direct optical excitation of the isomer or its radiative decay back to the ground state has not yet been observed, and a series of key nuclear structure parameters such as the exact energies and half-lives of the low-lying nuclear levels of Th-229 are yet unknown. Here we present the first active optical pumping into Th-229m. Our scheme employs narrow-band 29 keV synchrotron radiation to resonantly excite the second excited state, which then predominantly decays into the isomer. We determine the resonance energy with 0.07 eV accuracy, measure a half-life of 82.2 ps, an excitation linewidth of 1.70 neV, and extract the branching ratio of the second excited state into the ground and isomeric state respectively. These measurements allow us to re-evaluate gamma spectroscopy data that have been collected over 40~years.