IRIS : Charged particle reaction spectroscopy at ISAC

我们宇宙的很大一部分是由核反应提供动力的，这是太阳发光和恒星发光背后的秘密。在我们的实验室中，核反应和散射是揭开隐藏在我们宇宙中可见物质核心的秘密的方法。该项目的重点是探索在超新星、中子星等宇宙某些环境中产生的中子比质子多得多的稀有同位素，或者反之亦然。利用位于卑诗省温哥华的加拿大国家亚原子物理实验室的IRIS设备，有可能关于其未知性质的新发现。IRIS设施率先使用冰冻的薄层固体氢作为反应靶标。目标的氢同位素与TRIUMF产生的稀有同位素加速射束相互作用。通过观察这种相互作用过程中发出的粒子，我们可以窥探稀有同位素的性质。这揭示了大自然是如何安排构建这些同位素的积木的，从而推断出自然最强力(核力)的性质。这也让我们能够揭开大自然是如何创造出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性使得有必要寻求基本问题的答案，即自然界如何组织中子和质子形成具有高度不对称中质子比的束缚系统，以及当它们变成非束缚时，它们在极限时是如何表现的。

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.