RUI: Establishing an Undergraduate Research Group in Nuclear Physics

为了让本科生为他们未来的职业生涯或研究生院做好准备，需要额外的课外经历。奥古斯塔纳学院(一家仅面向本科生的小型文科院校)的一名新教员将通过建立一个核物理本科生研究小组来满足这一需求，该研究小组将在密歇根州立大学国家超导回旋实验室(NSCL)进行实验。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现有的原子核理论模型。在这项研究中，中子和带电粒子是一致探测到的，因为28F是如此不稳定，以至于它立即分裂成27F和一个中子。带电粒子用大间隙偶极磁铁弯曲远离中子，在那里用一套带电粒子探测器测量它们的性质。中子是在模块化中子阵列(MONA)中探测到的。MONA是由以本科生为主的机构合作建立的，奥古斯塔纳现在是其中的一员。实验的分析目前正在进行中。该助学金为本科生的研究和成果在会议上的传播提供支持。此外，这笔赠款将支持对整个探测器系统的可能改进进行调查，并对上述28F进行类似的实验。

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.