Studies of Nuclear Structure and Nuclear Processes at Intermediate Energies

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Research in intermediate energy, hadronic nuclear physics will be carried out at the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility (IUCF). IUCF is a national user facility, with research being carried out by faculty, staff, postdocs, and students from Indiana University, as well as from other universities in the US and abroad, from US national laboratories, from other federal agencies, and from industry. Proposals are made to IUCF for use of accelerator beam time and for other specialized resources needed to carry out the research. All such proposals are reviewed by a national program advisory committee, which in turn makes recommendations to award beam time or to decline a proposal. The IUCF operations staff provides about 4000 hours of accelerator beam time per year during a 6 to 7 month running cycle. The research program will center around the use of proton and other light ion beams with energies up to 500 million electron volts, and has several broad themes: the study of the meson-nucleon basis for the nucleon-nucleon force; the study of few-nucleon systems, in particular searching for manifestations of many-body forces; the study of modifications of the nucleon-nucleon force in the nuclear medium as a potential manifestation of the underlying quark- gluon basis of the strong interaction; and tests of fundamental symmetries. The data produced will challenge current theories of the nucleon-nucleon force, its modification in nuclei, and the fundamental symmetries which it obeys. In addition, IUCF serves a strong user community studying accelerator physics, specifically non-linear particle beam dynamics and de-polarization phenomena in cyclic accelerators. These data will extend our knowledge of particle accelerators and the limits of sustainable beam intensities and beam polarizations. Lastly, IUCF provides beam to applied researchers in materials and biological radiation effects. Education of students and postdocs is a strong component of the IUCF mission.