News

May 2021: beta-delayed neutron emission of r-process nuclei at the N = 82 shell closure

The first results for Pn-values from our BRIKEN experiment in the region of 132Sn are published in Physics Letters B: link. We show the new data is key to understand in detail the synthesis of heavy elements during the rapid neutron capture process in exploding supernovae or colliding neutron stars. Congratulations to Oscar Hall and all BRIKEN collaborators.

December 2020: Congrats Sithira!

Congratulations Sithira for a successful thesis defense and graduation from the Physics Master of Science program, and best wishes as he moves forward with his science career. Stay tuned for the the results of the thesis work - on CAEN 742 Digitizer family as the electronic module for timing detectors in time-of-flight Bρ mass measurement experiments - finding its way to a nuclear physics journal in the near future

September 2020: Farewell to the NSCL

At the beginning of September, following strict social distancing practices, we prepared and ran the last TOF-Brho mass measurement experiment before the NSCL morphs into FRIB (experiment e18009). Thanks to all colleagues at the NSCL and of Prof. Mike Famiano group (WMU) who helped locally, and those elsewhere in the US and abroad that joined virtually.

May 2020: Made-in-Michigan Radiation Detectors

Our paper on newly developed "Plastic Scintillation Detectors for Time-of-Flight Mass Measurements" has been accepted to publication in the NIM A journal (link). Congratulations to Kailong and the great team of collaborators from CMU, WMU and MSU!

April 2020: Webnucleo Hackathon

Our first Webnucleo event was such as success that we organized a second one during the times of social distancing: a online Astrohackathon with participants from CMU and Clemson University. Three days of fun and hard work with reaction network calculations. Special congratulations to Irin and the Processing White Dwarf group for their grand prize. Updated GitHub repository: here (image credit: Trust the Process team).

February 2020: Nucleosynthesis workshop at CMU

On February 7th we had the first hands-on workshop on nuclear astrophysics tools at CMU. Prof. Brad Meyer from Clemson University guided us, eleven young and not-so-young scientists, through a day of reaction network modeling with Webnucleo and NucNet Tools. More information and our acquired collective wisdom is gathered in a GitHub site here.

December 2019: first IReNA workshop

The JINA-CEE/IReNA - Ukakuren/NAOJ workshop (lengthy name!) was a two-day meeting at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan about stellar spectroscopy, nucleosynthesis, and related topics. It served as the kick-off event for IReNA's r-process experiment focus area, as well as newly established agreements between JINA-CEE and NAOJ. It was also a great opportunity to discuss ongoing projects with colleagues in Japan, and explore new collaborations. Its website is here.

November 2019: IReNA is here!

The International Research Network for Nuclear Astrophysics is a brand new network-of-networks created thanks to a $2 million grant from NSF and lead by the Joint Institute of Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA-CEE). CMU is involved as one of IReNA's core institutions, and we're looking forward to new opportunities to connect with scientists around the world that share our enthusiasm for nuclear astrophysics. More details in this press release.

September 2019: New Project: TOF experiments

We're excited to receive the US Department of Energy award for the project "Time-of-Flight Experiments for Nuclear Structure and Astrophysics" (DE-SC0020406). It will support our next TOF mass measurements at the NSCL, and continuing detector development work at the CMU radiation detectors lab.

September 2019: McNair Scholars Program

Congratulations to Collin Thompson on completing his summer research project as a CMU McNair Scholar - "Nucleosynthesis of heavy elements by neutron capture processes" - and developing important tools to evaluate new experimental data in r-process reaction network calculations.

August 2019: Welcome Irin!

With the start of a new academic year we have a new member in our research group. Irin Sultana joins us as a student in the brand new Physics Ph. D. program at CMU.

July 2019: R-process workshop

The ECT* center in Trento, Italy, was the venue for the workshop on a hot topic of current research:Nuclear and astrophysics aspects for the rapid neutron capture process in the era of multimessenger observations (link). It was a week of lively discussions about some of the latest developments of the field. Prof. Estrade was one of the organizers of this event.

June 2019: Isomers!

The first results from our program of decay experiments at the RIBF laboratory in Japan have been published. An experiment lead by Kathrin Wimmer (University of Tokyo) discovered new microsecond isomer in 59Ti and 60Ti (PLB 792, 16). In first results from the experiments of the BRIKEN collaboration, Vi Ho Phong (RIKEN, Japan) and Giuseppe Lorusso (NPL, UK) found a new isomer in 134In (PRC 100, 011302(R)). The study of these long-lived excited states in atomic nuclei, near the N=40 and N=82 neutron numbers, is key to understand how the structure of unstable isotopes evolve with increasing number of neutrons.

May 2019: Graduation Season

Congratulations to Tom on his graduation from the B. Sc. Physics program at CMU! All the best for his new adventure as a Space Operations Analyst at SES.

April 2019: Distinguished Student Prize

Congratulation to Neerajan for his travel award from Distinguished Student Program of the APS Forum of International Physics. The prize came with the opportunity to talk about his research on beta-decay experiments at the 2019 APS April Meeting in Denver, CO.