Research in Nuclear Astrophysics, Nuclear Physics, and Particle Physics

核天体物理、核物理和粒子物理研究

• 批准号: 9901241
• 负责人: Richard Boyd
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Ohio State University Research Foundation -DO NOT USE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-04-15 至 2002-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9901241&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Research; Nuclear; Astrophysics; Physics; Particle

This NSF grant is intended to support three main programs, all aimed at understanding supernovae or x-ray bursts, two of the most dramatic events in the cosmos. The first two will study nuclei or nuclear reactions that are important to processes in stars that synthesize many of the nuclei of which our universe is comprised. Both processes involve unusually hot stellar environments, which result in the processes proceeding at very rapid rates. Thus they can add many protons, in one case, or neutrons, in the other, without undergoing the decays that usually maintain nuclei at or near stability. Understanding these processes necessitates knowing the properties of, and reactions on, the nuclei through which they pass, so both of these programs focus on short-lived nuclei. These nuclei can only be produced at radioactive nuclear beam facilities, necessitating our working at accelerator laboratories at Michigan State University, TRIUMF in Canada, or RIKEN in Japan. A good understanding of the nuclear aspects of the processes by which nuclei are synthesized ultimately allows inversion of the predicted nuclear abundances to understand or constrain the stellar environments in which these processes occur. Thus these two programs are aimed at understanding both the nucleosynthesis from these processes and the conditions in which the processes operate. Much of this research will produce data of interest to both nuclear astrophysics and nuclear physics.The third project is for development of an observatory of neutrinos emitted from a galactic supernova. While this will ultimately be a much larger effort than could be supported by the present grant, we plan over the next three years to perform the calculations and develop the detectors that will be essential for this observatory. The neutrinos from a supernova are expected to arrive at earth in several tens of seconds, during which time we should be able to obtain an extraordinary amount of diagnostic information about the process of stellar collapse and the ensuing events that accompany the explosion of a supernova and the collapse of its core to a neutron star or black hole. It may also be possible to use the data to determine the mass of the most massive neutrinos, information that would be extremely useful to other areas of astrophysics and to particle physics.

NSF的这项拨款旨在支持三个主要项目，所有这些项目都旨在了解超新星或X射线爆发，这是宇宙中最引人注目的两个事件。 前两个将研究原子核或核反应，这些反应对恒星中合成我们宇宙组成的许多原子核的过程很重要。 这两个过程都涉及异常炎热的恒星环境，导致过程以非常快的速度进行。 因此，它们可以在一种情况下加入许多质子，或在另一种情况下加入许多中子，而不经历通常使原子核保持稳定或接近稳定的衰变。 要理解这些过程，就必须知道它们所经过的原子核的性质和反应，所以这两个程序都关注短寿命的原子核。 这些核只能在放射性核束设施中产生，因此我们必须在密歇根州立大学、加拿大的TRIUMF或日本的RIKEN的加速器实验室工作。 一个很好的理解核合成过程的核方面最终允许预测的核丰度的反演，以了解或限制这些过程发生的恒星环境。 因此，这两个程序的目的是了解从这些过程中的核合成和过程中的操作条件。 这项研究的大部分将产生对核天体物理学和核物理学都有意义的数据。第三个项目是建立一个银河系超新星发射中微子观测站。 虽然这最终将是一个更大的努力比目前的赠款可以支持，我们计划在未来三年内进行计算和开发探测器，这将是必不可少的这个天文台。 超新星的中微子预计在几十秒内到达地球，在这段时间内，我们应该能够获得大量关于恒星坍缩过程的诊断信息，以及伴随超新星爆炸及其核心坍缩成中子星星或黑洞的后续事件。 也有可能利用这些数据来确定质量最大的中微子的质量，这些信息对天体物理学和粒子物理学的其他领域非常有用。