120436865
Pair and single neutron transfer with Borromean 8He
Abstract Direct observation of the survival of 199 Au residues after 2 n transfer in the He 8 + Au 197 system and the absence of the corresponding 67 Cu in the He 8 + Cu 65 system at various energies are reported. The measurements of the surprisingly large cross sections for 199 Au, coupled with the integral cross sections for the various Au residues, is used to obtain the first model-independent lower limits on the ratio of 2 n to 1 n transfer cross sections from 8 He to a heavy target. A comparison of the transfer cross sections for 6,8 He on these targets highlights the differences in the interactions of these Borromean nuclei. These measurements for the most neutron-rich nuclei on different targets highlight the need to probe the reaction mechanism with various targets and represent an experimental advance towards understanding specific features of pairing in the dynamics of dilute nuclear systems.
206538240
A Shorter 146Sm Half-Life Measured and Implications for 146Sm-142Nd Chronology in the Solar System
A New Lease on Half-Life Radiometric dating relies on measuring the abundance of long-lived radionuclides relative to the abundance of their radiogenic decay products—a process determined by the original radionuclide's half-life. For primordial radionuclides that decay slowly, such as 146Sm decaying to 142Nd, this method provides the timing of some of the earliest processes in solar system history. Using accelerator mass spectrometry, Kinoshita et al. (p. 1614) provide a revised estimate for the 146Sm half-life of ∼68.7 million years, which is 30% shorter than the previously accepted value. This shorter half-life suggests that reductions need to be made in the estimated ages for differentiation of Earth's mantle and the solidification of the Moon's magma ocean and for other more recent processes. Mantle differentiation of Earth, the Moon, and Mars occurred earlier and over a shorter time scale than previously estimated. The extinct p-process nuclide 146Sm serves as an astrophysical and geochemical chronometer through measurements of isotopic anomalies of its α-decay daughter 142Nd. Based on analyses of 146Sm/147Sm α-activity and atom ratios, we determined the half-life of 146Sm to be 68 ± 7 (1σ) million years, which is shorter than the currently used value of 103 ± 5 million years. This half-life value implies a higher initial 146Sm abundance in the early solar system, (146Sm/144Sm)0 = 0.0094 ± 0.0005 (2σ), than previously estimated. Terrestrial, lunar, and martian planetary silicate mantle differentiation events dated with 146Sm-142Nd converge to a shorter time span and in general to earlier times, due to the combined effect of the new 146Sm half-life and (146Sm/144Sm)0 values.
2219103
AMANDA - first running experiment to use GRID in production
The Grid technologies are in ongoing development. Using current Grid toolkits like the Globus toolkit gives one the possibility to build up virtual organizations. Although these tookits are in still under development and do not feature all functionality, they can already now be used to set up an efficient computing environment for physics collaborations with only moderate work. We discuss in this paper the use of such a computing structure in two running experiments - the AMANDA (AMANDA = Antarctic muon and neutrino detector array) neutrino telescope and the D0 experiment at Tevatron, Fermilab. One of the main features of our approach is to avoid reprogramming of the existing software which is based on several programming languages (FORTRAN, C/C++, JAVA). This was realized with software layers around the collaboration software taking care about in- and output, user notification, tracking of running jobs, etc. A further important aspect is the resolution of library dependencies, which occur when a user runs self-compiled jobs on machines, where these libraries are not installed. These dependencies are also resolved with this layers.
119287201
High-precision measurement of total fission cross sections in spallation reactions of 208 Pb and 238 U
Total cross sections for proton- and deuteron-induced-fission of 208Pb and 238U have been determined in the energy range between 500 MeV and 1 GeV. The experiment has been performed in inverse kinematics at GSI Darmstadt, facilitating the counting of the projectiles and the identification of the reaction products. High precision between 5 and 7 percent has been achieved by individually counting the beam particles and by registering both fission fragments in coincidence with high efficiency and full Z resolution. Fission was clearly distinguished from other reaction channels. The results were found to deviate by up to 30 percent from Prokofiev's systematics on total fission cross sections. There is good agreement with an elaborate experiment performed in direct kinematics.
118688563
Isotopic fission fragment distributions as a deep probe to fusion-fission dynamics
During the fission process, the atomic nucleus deforms and elongates up to the two fragments inception and their final separation at the scission deformation. The evolution of the nucleus energy with deformation defines a potential energy landscape in the multidimensional deformation space. It is determined by the macroscopic properties of the nucleus, and is also strongly influenced by the single-particle structure of the nucleus, which modifies the macroscopic energy minima. The fission fragment distribution is a direct consequence of the deformation path the nucleus has encountered, and therefore is the most genuine experimental observation of the potential energy landscape of the deforming nucleus. Very asymmetric fusion-fission reactions at energy close to the Coulomb barrier, produce well-defined conditions of the compound nucleus formation, where processes such as quasi-fission, pre-equilibrium emission and incomplete fusion are negligible. In the same time, the excitation energy is sufficient to reduce significantly structural effects, and mostly the macroscopic part of the potential is responsible for the formation of the fission fragments. We use inverse kinematics combined with a spectrometer to select and identify the fission fragments produced in 238U+12C at a bombarding energy close to and well-above the Coulomb barrier. For the first time, the isotopic yields are measured over the complete atomic-number distribution, between Z=30 and Z=63. In the experimental set-up, it is also possible to identify transfer-induced reactions, which lead to low-energy fission
109652400
Commissioning of the ATLAS reconstruction software with first data
The ATLAS detector is being commissioned using all types of physics data available: cosmic rays, beam-halo and beam-gas events. In addition to putting in place the trigger and data acquisition chains, commissioning of the full software chain is a main goal. This is interesting not only to ensure that the reconstruction, monitoring and simulation chains are ready to deal with LHC physics data, but also to understand the detector performance in view of achieving the physics requirements.
99011202
Fission des Noyaux Lourds et Superlourds
Ce travail de these porte sur l'etude de la dynamique des reactions de fusion-fission sous ses aspects aussi bien theoriques qu'experimentaux. Dans le cas de systemes nucleaires fortement excites, nous decrivons la fission symetrique (seule presente a haute energie) par un modele macroscopique unidimensionnel base sur la resolution de l'equation de Langevin couplee aux equations gouvernant l'evaporation de particules legeres. Un accord satisfaisant entre predictions theoriques et resultats experimentaux de multiplicites de neutrons de pre-scission a alors ete obtenu. A plus basse energie la coexistence eventuelle de modes de fission symetrique et asymetrique(s), ou fission multimodale, est a prendre en compte. Notre description theorique est alors generalisee a un traitement multidimensionnel de l'equation de Langevin. L'influence des differentes prescriptions theoriques (effets de couche et d'appariement, friction, evaporation) sur les probabilites et les temps de fission ainsi que sur les multiplicites de pre-scission est etudiee. Dans une seconde partie, les donnees experimentales obtenues lors d'une campagne de mesures menee aupres du cyclotron U$400$ au JINR de Dubna sont analysees. Le noyau compose de $^{227}$Pa resulte du bombardement d'une cible de $^{209}$Bi par un faisceau d'ions d'$^{18}$O. Le detecteur d'ions lourds CORSET, constitue de galettes a microcanaux, detecte les fragments de fission et le multidetecteur DeMoN permet la mesure des neutrons emis en co\"{\i}ncidence. Une recons\-truction cinematique fournit la distribution en masse et en vitesse des fragments de fission et une analyse en source donne acces aux neutrons de pre-scission. Il est en particulier interessant d'etudier l'evolution de la multiplicite de pre-scission avec l'asymetrie en masse des fragments. La confrontation theorie-experience nous permet alors de mettre en evidence les atouts mais egalement des defauts du modele et de proposer dans certains cas (des\-cription de la friction, theorie d'evaporation) des moyens pour y remedier (dependance en temperature des coefficients de transport, parametrisation de la surface nucleaire).
118399911
High Rate Proton Irradiation of 15mm Muon Drifttubes
Future LHC luminosity upgrades will significantly increase the amount of background hits from photons, neutrons and protons in the detectors of the ATLAS muon spectrometer. At the proposed LHC peak luminosity of 5*10^34 1/cm^2s, background hit rates of more than 10 kHz/cm^2 are expected in the innermost forward region, leading to a loss of performance of the current tracking chambers. Based on the ATLAS Monitored Drift Tube chambers, a new high rate capable drift tube detecor using tubes with a reduced diameter of 15mm was developed. To test the response to highly ionizing particles, a prototype chamber of 46 15mm drift tubes was irradiated with a 20 MeV proton beam at the tandem accelerator at the Maier-Leibnitz Laboratory, Munich. Three tubes in a planar layer were irradiated while all other tubes were used for reconstruction of cosmic muon tracks through irradiated and non-irradiated parts of the chamber. To determine the rate capability of the 15mm drift-tubes we investigated the effect of the proton hit rate on pulse height, efficiency and spatial resolution of the cosmic muon signals.
15709360
New signatures on dissipation from fission induced by relativistic heavy-ion collisions
Fissile nuclei with small shape distortion relative to the ground-state deformation and with low angular momentum were produced in peripheral heavy-ion collisions. Under the conditions of small shape distortions and low angular momentum, the theoretical description of the fission process can be considerably simplified, and the relevant information on dissipation can be better extracted than in conventional experiments based on fusion-fission reactions. In addition, this experimental approach induces very high excitation energies, a condition necessary to observe transient effects. The experimental data were taken at GSI using a set-up especially conceived for fission studies in inverse kinematics. This set-up allowed determining three observables whose sensitivity to dissipation was investigated for the first time: the total fission cross sections of 238U at 1 A GeV as a function of the target mass, and, for the reaction of 238U at 1 A GeV on a (CH2)n target, the partial fission cross sections and the partial charge distributions of the fission fragments. The comparison of the new experimental data with a reaction code adapted to the conditions of the reactions investigated leads to clear conclusions on the strength of dissipation at small deformation where the existing results are rather contradictory.
19225231
Simple relations between mean passage times and Kramers' stationary rate.
The classical problem of the escape time of a metastable potential well in a thermal environment is generally studied by various quantities like Kramers' stationary escape rate, mean first passage time, nonlinear relaxation time, or mean last passage time. In addition, numerical simulations lead to the definition of other quantities as the long-time limit escape rate and the transient time. In this paper, we propose some simple analytical relations between all these quantities. In particular, we point out the hypothesis used to evaluate these various times in order to clarify their comparison and applicability, and show how average times include the transient time and the long-time limit of the escape rate.
122677490
On current ambiguity in the interpretation of fission at intermediate excitation energy
Abstract Various approaches are currently used to interpret experimental data on fission. We critically examine a wide set of observables measured for fission of Po 206 , 210 nuclei at medium excitation energy, and illustrate the ambiguity in current analysis. Dynamical calculations based on the four-dimensional Langevin equation using a macroscopic potential energy landscape are performed, and found to consistently describe available measurements. This observation calls into question the robustness of recent analysis based on statistical-model calculations and concluding, on the contrary, to substantial shell effects at the fission saddle point in Po 206 , 210 . The inconsistency in interpretation reached by the two approaches shows that, depending on the system, the conclusion can be strongly model-dependent. Although this may not be surprising, it emphasizes the today still limited reliability of firmly extracting fundamental nuclear properties from customary analysis.