IRIS : Charged particle reaction spectroscopy at ISAC

我们宇宙的很大一部分是由核反应驱动的，这就是太阳和星星发光背后的秘密。在我们的实验室里，核反应和散射是揭示宇宙中可见物质核心秘密的方法。这个项目的重点是探索在我们宇宙的某些环境中，如超新星、中子星等，产生的中子多于质子或反之亦然的稀有同位素。利用加拿大亚原子物理国家实验室（TRIUMF）的IRIS设备，对它们未知性质的新发现成为可能。IRIS设施率先使用固体氢的薄冰片作为反应目标。目标的氢同位素与在TRIUMF产生的稀有同位素加速束相互作用。通过观察相互作用过程中释放的粒子，我们可以窥见稀有同位素的特性。这揭示了大自然是如何安排构建这些同位素的基石，从而推断出自然界最强的力（核力）的性质。这也使我们能够解开大自然是如何创造我们在地球上发现的大多数重元素的。这些不稳定核的意想不到的特征使得有必要寻求关于自然如何组织中子和质子形成具有高度不对称中子质子比的束缚系统以及当它们脱离束缚时它们在极限时的行为的基本问题的答案。

A large part of our universe is powered by nuclear reactions, that are the secret behind the glow of the sun and the shine of the stars. In our laboratories nuclear reactions and scattering are the ways to uncover the secrets that lie in the heart of visible matter in our universe. This project focuses on exploring the rare isotopes with a large excess of neutrons over protons or vice versa, that are created in certain environments of our universe such as supernovae, neutron stars etc. New discoveries about their unknown properties become possible using the facility IRIS at Canada's National Laboratory for subatomic physics, TRIUMF in Vancouver, BC. The IRIS facility has pioneered in the use of an thin frozen sheet of solid hydrogen as reaction target. The hydrogen isotope of the target interacts with accelerated beams of rare isotopes produced at TRIUMF. By observing the particles emitted from this interaction process we get a peek into the properties of rare isotopes. This reveals how nature arranges the building blocks to build these isotopes and hence deduce the properties of nature's strongest force (nuclear force). This also allows us to unravel how nature creates the majority of the heavy elements that we find on earth. The unexpected characteristics of these unstable nuclei make it necessary to seek answers to the fundamental question on how nature organizes the neutrons and protons to form a bound systems with highly asymmetric neutron to proton ratio and how do they behave at the limit when they become unbound.