RUI: Establishing an Undergraduate Research Group in Nuclear Physics

本科生为未来的职业生涯或研究生院做准备需要课堂外的额外经验。奥古斯塔纳学院（一所只招收本科生的小型文理学院）的一名新教员将通过在密歇根州立大学（MSU）的国家超导回旋加速器实验室（NSCL）建立一个核物理本科生研究小组来解决这一需求。主要的实验目标是研究原子核28F。确定28F的结构将有助于约束当前的原子核理论模型。在这项研究中，中子和带电粒子被巧合地探测到，因为28F非常不稳定，它会立即分裂成27F和一个中子。带电粒子被一个大间隙偶极磁体从中子处弯曲，在那里它们的性质被一套带电粒子探测器测量。中子是在模块化中子阵列（MoNA）中检测到的。MoNA是由大多数本科院校合作建立的，奥古斯塔现在是其中的一员。实验分析目前正在进行中。该资助用于支持本科生的研究和在会议上传播研究成果。此外，这笔拨款将支持对整个探测器系统的可能改进进行调查，并执行与上述28F类似的实验。

The preparation of undergraduate students for their future careers or graduate school requires additional experiences outside the classroom. A new faculty member at Augustana College (a small, undergraduate-only, liberal arts institution), will address this need by establishing an undergraduate research group in nuclear physics to perform experiments at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University (MSU). The primary experimental goal is to study the atomic nucleus 28F. Determining the structure of 28F will help to constrain current theoretical models of nuclei. For this study the neutron and charged particle are detected in coincidence since 28F is so unstable that it immediately falls apart into 27F and a neutron. Charged particles are bent away from the neutrons with a large-gap dipole magnet where their properties are measured using a suite of charged particle detectors. The neutrons are detected in the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA). MoNA was built by a collaboration of mostly undergraduate institutions of which Augustana is now a member. The analysis of the experiment is currently underway. The grant provides support for undergraduate student research and dissemination of results at conferences. In addition, the grant will support the investigation of possible improvements to the overall detector system and performing similar experiments to 28F described above.