Studies of Nuclear Reactions and Structure

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9970991TaborThis is a proposal for support of the experimental nuclear physics group at Florida State University. The proposed research is to be carried out at the FSU Tandem/LINAC accelerator facility and at other laboratories around the U.S. Improvements at the FSU facility, including new high-efficiency 'clover' detectors, a radioactive 14C beam and an intenxe, highly polarized 7Li beam will be valuable for investigations of the high-spin structure of s-d shell nuclei far from stability to test microscopic and macroscopic nuclear models, for exploring octupole collectivity in actinide nuclei, and for studying the structure of neutron-rich mid-mass nuclei. The polarized 7Li beam provides an excellent way to explore how the shape and internal structure of a loosely bound nucleus affect scattering and transfer processes, especially the couplings to the continuum which are so important in halo nuclei. Our developments in resonant particle decay spectroscopy instrumentation will permit high resolution studies of the alpha decay properties of light nuclei to explore mirror states, cluster structure, and widths of astrophysical interest. The FSU Tandem/LINAC and associated instrumentation are well suited to precision fast-beam laser spectroscopy of few electron ions to test relativistic and higher order QED effects in atomic structure calculations.We propose to take advantage of the new capabilities at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory after the upgrade, including the compact beam sweeper magnet which FSU is helping build, to examine proton and neutron multipole matrix elements in exotic nuclei and to probe the momentum distributions of 'halo' nuclei. Experiments are planned using Gammasphere and Euroball to investigate the quenching of pairing correlations and possible other dramatic phase changes at ultra-high spins. Our group has the primary responsibility for constructing the two Ring-imaging Cherenkov detectors for the PHENIX experiment, which is optimized to study the interior of hot dense nuclear matter formed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, and plans to be involved in 'mining' the data for signatures of quark-gluon plasma. Members of our group plan to exploit the new generation of electron accelerators and detectors for precision studies of the nucleon and light nuclei using the (e,e'p) reaction at Jefferson Lab, MIT-Bates, and the Mainz Microtron. Our group has been directly involved in the construction and commissioning of the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer at Jefferson Lab and is now involved in the e1 experimental program to study the electroproduction and decay of systems containing strange quarks to add to the understanding of fundamental two-particle interactions.