Sep 22, 2022
The first measurement of Short-Range Correlations (SRC) in an exotic nucleus took place in May 2022 with the Cocotier instrument at the GSI facility in Darmstadt, Germany. This experiment is a milestone in the program that was started in 2017 with a grant from the French Research Agency that allowed physicists to build a liquid hydrogen target (see previous highlight). The goal of this experiment is to test the hypothesis that nucleon can form compact pair, the so-called SRC pair.
Jun 24, 2021
DPhN physicists have played a decisive role in the first measurement of pairs of nucleons using a new method, that will pave the way to the study of short range interactions in radioactive nuclei.
Nucleons are social particles. Not only do they enjoy living in communities inside nuclei, but they also form couples within these communities. Indeed, one can observe protons and neutrons forming pairs inside nuclei. DPhN physicists have played a decisive role in the first measurement of such pairs of nucleons using a new method, that will pave the way to the study of these close (or short range) interactions in radioactive nuclei. The results have recently been published in Nature Physics [Pat21].
Jun 04, 2021
Two state-of-the-art instruments, GLAD and COCOTIER, were designed and built at Irfu in the last few years and are now operational in the R3B experimental room of the GSI heavy ion accelerator (Darmstadt, Germany). Both are intended to be part of the equipment that will be used at FAIR, the new machine under construction at the GSI site. GLAD is a large acceptance spectrometer for the analysis of relativistic radioactive heavy ion beam reactions.
Aug 31, 2018
In an article published in August 2018 in the journal Nature [1], the CLAS collaboration of Jefferson Lab (USA) reports an extensive study on short-range correlations between nucleons in different nuclei. The conclusion goes against intuition, indicating that the greater the ratio of neutrons to protons in a nucleus, the greater the speed of protons relative to neutrons.
