RUI: Establishing an Undergraduate Research Group in Nuclear Physics

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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.