123598883
alpha-decay of the new isotope Po-187: Probing prolate structures beyond the neutron mid-shell at N=104
The new neutron-deficient isotope {sup 187}Po has been identified in the complete fusion reaction {sup 46}Ti+{sup 144}Sm{yields}{sup 187}Po+3n at the velocity filter SHIP. Striking features of the {sup 187}Po {alpha} decay are the strongly-hindered decay to the spherical ground state and unhindered decay to a surprisingly low-lying deformed excited state at 286 keV in the daughter nucleus {sup 183}Pb. Based on the potential energy surface calculations, the {sup 187}Po ground state and the 286 keV excited state in {sup 183}Pb were interpreted as being of prolate origin. The systematic deviation of the {alpha}-decay properties in the lightest odd-A Po isotopes relative to the smooth behavior in the even-A neighbors is discussed. Improved data for the decay of {sup 187}Bi{sup m,g} were also obtained.
121183473
Observation of rotating nuclear molecules and determination of their lifetimes
Long-living rotating nuclear molecules (or “dinuclear systems”) have been observed at the velocity filter SHIP at GSI in reactions of 64Ni + 207Pb at Coulomb barrier energies. The rotation was directly revealed by the velocity spectra of deep inelastic target-like transfer products which are formed during the lifetime of the nuclear molecule and emitted after its breakup. The corresponding rotation angles were about 180 degree pointing to long nuclear interaction times or lifetimes of the system, respectively. We deduced the lifetimes from the lines in the velocity spectra originating from two different rotation angles. Further, the unambiguous correlation of a certain transfer product with its individual velocity spectrum allowed us to study the lifetimes as a function of the number of transferred protons.
13153867
Mass measurements of very neutron-deficient Mo and Tc isotopes and their impact on rp process nucleosynthesis.
The masses of ten proton-rich nuclides, including the N=Z+1 nuclides ⁸⁵Mo and ⁸⁷Tc, were measured with the Penning trap mass spectrometer SHIPTRAP. Compared to the Atomic Mass Evaluation 2003 a systematic shift of the mass surface by up to 1.6 MeV is observed causing significant abundance changes of the ashes of astrophysical x-ray bursts. Surprisingly low α separation energies for neutron-deficient Mo and Tc are found, making the formation of a ZrNb cycle in the rp process possible. Such a cycle would impose an upper temperature limit for the synthesis of elements beyond Nb in the rp process.
201093324
Proton Radioactivity
16408480
Effective Kaon energy from a novel chiral SU(3) model
Abstract A new chiral SU(3) Lagrangian is proposed to describe the properties of kaons and anti-kaons in the nuclear medium, The saturation properties of nuclear matter are reproduced as well as the results of the Dirac-Briickner theory, After introducing the coupling between the omega meson and the kaon, our results for effective kaon and anti-kaon energy are quite similar as calculated in the one-boson-exchange model.
119438146
The discovery of the heaviest elements
29630378
Cosmological classicalization: maintaining unitarity under relevant deformations of the Einstein-Hilbert action.
Generic relevant deformations of Einstein's gravity theory contain additional degrees of freedom that have a multifaceted stabilization dynamics on curved spacetimes. We show that these relevant degrees of freedom are self-protected against unitarity violations by the formation of classical field lumps that eventually merge to a new background geometry. The transition is heralded by the massive decay of the original vacuum and evolves through a strong coupling regime. This process fits in the recently proposed classicalization mechanism and extends it further to free field dynamics on curved backgrounds.
20326557
Brane Induced Gravity, its Ghost and the Cosmological Constant Problem
Brane Induced Gravity is regarded as a promising framework for addressing the cosmological constant problem, but it also suffers from a ghost instability for parameter values that make it phenomeno ...
118359212
Generic inference of inflation models by non-Gaussianity and primordial power spectrum reconstruction
We present a generic inference method for inflation models from observational data by the usage of higher-order statistics of the curvature perturbation on uniform density hypersurfaces. This method is based on the calculation of the posterior for the primordial non-Gaussianity parameters fNL and gNL, which in general depend on specific parameters of inflation and reheating models, and enables to discriminate among the still viable inflation models. To keep analyticity as far as possible to dispense with numerically expensive sampling techniques a saddle-point approximation is introduced, whose precision is validated for a numerical toy example. The mathematical formulation is done in a generic way so that the approach remains applicable to cosmic microwave background data as well as to large scale structure data. Additionally, we review a few currently interesting inflation models and present numerical toy examples thereof in two and three dimensions to demonstrate the efficiency of the higher-order statistics method. A second quantity of interest is the primordial power spectrum. Here, we present two Bayesian methods to infer it from observational data, the so called critical filter and an extension thereof with smoothness prior, both allowing for a non-parametric spectrum reconstruction. These methods are able to reconstruct the spectra of the observed perturbations and the primordial ones of curvature perturbation even in case of non-Gaussianity and partial sky coverage. We argue that observables like T- and B-modes permit to measure both spectra. This also allows to infer the level of non-Gaussianity generated since inflation.
121734598
Thermal decoupling of WIMPs from first principles
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are arguably the most natural dark matter candidates from a particle physics point of view. After their number density has frozen out in the early universe, thereby setting their relic density today, WIMPs are still kept very close to thermal equilibrium by scattering events with standard model particles. The complete decoupling from the thermal bath happens as late as at temperatures of around ~1−10 MeV and provides an important cosmological scale that can directly be translated into a small scale cut-off of the spectrum of matter density fluctuations. We present here a full analytic treatment of the kinetic decoupling process from first principles. This allows an exact determination of the decoupling scale, for arbitrary WIMP candidates and any scattering amplitude. As an application, we consider the situation of the lightest supersymmetric particle as well as the lightest Kaluza–Klein particle that arises in theories with universal extra dimensions; furthermore, we show that our formalism can also easily be applied to, e.g., the evolution of the non-relativistic electrons into the recombination regime. Finally, we comment on the impacts for the smallest gravitationally bound structures and the prospects for the indirect detection of dark matter.
1452681
FORMATION OF SMALL-SCALE STRUCTURE IN SUSY CDM
The lightest supersymmetric particle, most likely the lightest neutralino, is one of the most prominent particle candidates for cold dark matter (CDM). We show that the primordial spectrum of density fluctuations in neutralino CDM has a sharp cut-off, induced by two different damping mechanisms. During the kinetic decoupling of neutralinos, non-equilibrium processes constitute viscosity effects, which damp or even absorb density perturbations in CDM. After the last scattering of neutralinos, free streaming induces neutralino flows from overdense to underdense regions of space. Both damping mechanisms together define a minimal mass scale for perturbations in neutralino CDM, before the inhomogeneities enter the nonlinear epoch of structure formation. We find that the very first gravitationally bound neutralino clouds ought to have masses above 10 −6 M⊙, which is six orders of magnitude above the mass of possible axion miniclusters.