Feature Channels: Nuclear Physics

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Precise weighing of very rare titanium isotopes has revealed subtle behaviours that have stymied predictions of the most successful theories of nuclear matter.

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The Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has announced that Andrei Seryi will become its new associate director for accelerator operations, research and development in June.

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Scientists have designed a conceptual spacecraft to deflect Earth-bound asteroids and evaluated whether it would be able to nudge a massive asteroid – which has a remote chance to hitting Earth in 2135 – off course.

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Late last year, Sandia researchers completed an eight-month, 14,500-mile triathlon-like test to gather data on the bumps and jolts spent nuclear fuel experiences during transportation.

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Physicists at PPPL have recently found that drifting particles in plasma can forestall instabilities that reduce the pressure crucial to high-performance fusion reactions inside these facilities.

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Tracking atoms is crucial to improving the efficiency of next-generation perovskite solar cells.

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Physicians have long used CT scans to get 3D imagery of the inner workings of the human body. Now, physicists are working toward getting their first CT scans of the inner workings of the nucleus. A measurement of quarks in helium nuclei published last fall in Physical Review Letters demonstrates that 3D imaging of the inner structure of the nucleus is now possible.

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The CUORE experiment set the tightest limits yet on the rare decay of tellurium-130, providing insights into the nature of neutrinos.

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The observation of an abnormal state of matter in a 2-D magnetic material is the latest development in the race to harness novel electronic properties for more robust and efficient next-generation devices. Neutron scattering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory helped researchers investigate a graphene-like strontium-manganese-antimony material that hosts what they suspect is a Weyl semimetal phase.

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Researchers at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility used a “reduced physics” fluid model of plasma turbulence to explain unexpected properties of the density profile inside a tokamak experiment. Modeling plasma’s turbulent behavior could help scientists optimize the tokamak performance in future fusion reactors like ITER. They discuss their findings in this week’s Physics of Plasmas.

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Article describes dissertation award for graduate of Princeton University Department of Astrophysical Sciences.

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PPPL physicist Francesca Poli and coauthors recently published findings that describe an approach that for the first time simultaneously simulates the plasma, the magnetic islands, and the feedback control from waves that provide so-called electron cyclotron heating and current drive.

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For the first time, scientists demonstrated a long-theorized nuclear effect called nuclear excitation by electron capture. This advance tests theoretical models that describe how nuclear and atomic realms interact and may also provide new insights into how star elements are created.

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UPTON, NY — Elke-Caroline Aschenauer, a senior physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, has been awarded a Humboldt Research Award for her contributions to the field of experimental nuclear physics. This prestigious international award—issued by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany—comes with a prize of €60,000 (more than $70,000 U.

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Berkeley Lab physicists and their collaborators have demonstrated that computers are ready to tackle the universe’s greatest mysteries – they used neural networks to perform a deep dive into data simulating the subatomic particle soup that may have existed just microseconds after the big bang.

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The U.S. Department of Energy honors Argonne researchers in top 40 research-paper countdown.

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Scientists map electrical currents emanating from the boundary of a tokamak plasma, providing new information for reactor design.

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International collaborators advance physics basis for tokamak plasma confinement at low rotation, potentially benefiting a fusion reactor.

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Large-scale simulations of quarks promise precise view of reactions of astrophysical importance.

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Gravitational wave observations combined with optical and gamma-ray data confirm earlier predictions, offer insights into how the galaxy produces lead, mercury, and other elements.

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Article describes development of deep learning neural network to predict disruptions of fusion plasma.

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Researchers from Stanford University, two Department of Energy national labs and the battery manufacturer Samsung created a comprehensive picture of how the same chemical processes that give cathodes their high capacity are also linked to changes in atomic structure that sap performance.

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GRETINA, a state-of-the-art gamma ray spectrometer, is back at Argonne and will be contributing to our knowledge of nuclear physics, the structure of subatomic nuclei and other ingredients of the universe.

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The world's most advanced particle accelerator for investigating the quark structure of matter is gearing up to begin its first experiments following official completion of an upgrade to triple its original design energy. The Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility is now back online and ramping up for the start of experiments.

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For the first time, scientists have used high-performance computing (HPC) to reconstruct the data collected by a nuclear physics experiment—an advance that could dramatically reduce the time it takes to make detailed data available for scientific discoveries. The demonstration project used the Cori supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a high-performance computing center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, to reconstruct multiple datasets collected by the STAR detector during particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a nuclear physics research facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

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A research collaboration including scientists from Berkeley Lab has demonstrated that the Earth stops high-energy neutrinos – particles that only very rarely interact with matter.

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Anatoly Frenkel, Morgan May, Rachid Nouicer, Eric Stach, and Peter Steinberg were recognized for their outstanding contributions to astrophysics, materials physics, and nuclear physics.

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Livermore researchers conducted the first Livermore-designed “criticality” experiment in 40 years. It was one in a series that aims to help ensure plutonium operations – which are key to assessing the U.S. nuclear stockpile without testing – continue to be conducted safely.

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Dr. Hermann Grunder, Founding Director of Jefferson Lab, has been selected as one of two recipients of the 2018 IEEE NPSS Particle Accelerator Science and Technology (PAST) Award.

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Rural counties continue to rank lowest among counties across the U.S., in terms of health outcomes. A group of national organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National 4-H Council are leading the way to close the rural health gap.

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Matter in the cores of old white dwarfs and the crusts of neutron stars is compressed to unimaginable densities by intense gravitational forces. The scientific community believes this matter is composed of Coulomb crystals that form at temperatures potentially as high as 100 million Kelvin. Researchers in Russia clarify the physics of these crystals this week in the journal Physics of Plasmas.

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A new shape measurement of unstable ruthenium-110 has found this nucleus to be similar to a squashed football.

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CSU Fullerton researchers are key players in the groundbreaking observation of the first-ever gravitational wave signals emitted from the collision of two neutron stars.

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The first glimpse of data from the full array of a deeply chilled particle detector operating beneath a mountain in Italy sets the most precise limits yet on where scientists might find a theorized process to help explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.

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Swirling soup of matter’s fundamental building blocks spins ten billion trillion times faster than the most powerful tornado, setting new record for “vorticity.”

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New studies of behaviors of particles containing heavy quarks shed light into what the early universe looked like in its first microseconds.

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Physicists and computational scientists at Brookhaven Lab will help to develop the next generation of computational tools to push the field of nuclear physics forward.

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Using first-principles-based simulations, researchers found that an overlooked BKT phase sustained by quasicontinuous symmetry emerges between the ferroelectric and paraelectric phases of ferroelectic ultrathin film,

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As nuclear physicists delve ever deeper into the heart of matter, they require the tools to reveal the next layer of nature’s secrets. Nowhere is that more true than in computational nuclear physics. A new research effort led by theorists at DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) is now preparing for the next big leap forward in their studies thanks to funding under the 2017 SciDAC Awards for Computational Nuclear Physics.

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Simultaneous measurements of x-rays and gamma rays emitted in radioactive nuclear decays show that the vacancy left by an electron’s departure, not the atomic structure, influences whether gamma rays are released.

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Seven-year study explains how packets of light are exchanged when protons meet electrons.

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Groundbreaking scientific discovery conducted at UChicago 75 years ago

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The newly upgraded CEBAF Accelerator opens door to strong force studies.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory nuclear physicists and their partners are using America’s most powerful supercomputers to characterize behavior of objects, from subatomic neutrons to neutron stars, that differ dramatically in size yet are closely connected by physics.

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Nuclear physicists are now poised to embark on a new journey of discovery into the fundamental building blocks of the nucleus of the atom. The completion of the 12 GeV Upgrade Project of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) heralds this new era to image nuclei at their deepest level.

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Florida State University researchers found that the theory of quantum mechanics does not adequately explain how the heaviest and rarest elements found at the end of the table function. Instead, another well-known scientific theory — Albert Einstein’s famous Theory of Relativity — helps govern the behavior of the last 21 elements of the Periodic Table.

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Two researchers affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have received 2017 Early Career Research Program awards from the DOE’s Office of Science.

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Article describes simulated prediction of heat flux that ITER divertor plates will be able to tolerate.

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25 years ago today, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory conducted its last nuclear test. With the end of that era came the birth of stockpile stewardship and a new generation of science-focused weapon physicists.

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The results of the fifth and latest Collaborative Materials Exercise of the Nuclear Forensics International Technical Working Group, a global network of nuclear forensics experts, will be discussed at the American Chemical Society’s national meeting in Washington D.C. on August. 24.