STUDY OF EXOTIC NUCLEAR PHENOMENA AT ATOMKI AND IN ESFRI ROADMAP INSTITUTES ABROAD
In the frame of the project, besides the investigations in Atomki, the nuclear structure research group is about to take part in experiments with detector arrays including several hundreds of crystals at European heavy-ion accelerators. Performing these measurements the researchers of the institute can exploit their decades of experience in gamma-spectroscopy
At the next-generation radioactive ion beam accelerators, much higher beam intensities and gamma rates are expected than before.
The accelerators must be equipped with detector arrays of better resolution. Nowadays, two segmented, High-Purity Germanium gamma-ray tracking detector systems are under construction in the world: the GRETA in the USA and the AGATA in Europe. AGATA will have a special importance in the European nuclear structure studies in the next decades and be one of the key devices of the ESFRI Roadmap institutions. The ESFRI Roadmap contains the laboratories hosting infrastructures listed by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures as the most important pieces of research equipment in Europe.
Using the most state-of-the-art detector arrays we can answer the following questions cited with the highest priority in nuclear physics research by NuPECC, the Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee of the European Science Foundation:
How does the complexity of nuclear structure arise from the interaction between nucleons? What are the limits of nuclear stability? How does the nuclear chart emerge from fundamental interactions? How does nuclear structure evolve across the nuclear landscape and what shapes can nuclei adopt? How does the structure change with temperature and angular momentum? How to unify nuclear structure and reaction approaches? How complex are nuclear excitations?
The research topics of the project deal with the exploration of particular phenomena of nuclear physics which requires the most advanced detection techniques. In the nuclear reactions applied several different isotopes are produced.
The cesium-iodide charged-particle detector named DIAMANT was developed and constructed by Atomki researchers in recent years, which is able to select the reaction channels and to assist the observation of rarely-produced isotopes. The DIAMANT detector is designed so that it can be used as an ancillary detector in the AGATA system, as well.