This award supports the experimental nuclear physics group at Florida State University and the operation of the John D. Fox Superconducting Accelerator Laboratory, as well as other work at national user laboratories. The experiments include studies of nuclear reactions and decays that play key roles in all stages of stellar processes. Other experiments focus on understanding where the chemical elements come from and how they evolved and ordered themselves into nuclear shell structures. The group will also exploit heavy ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to investigate how visible matter came into being and how it evolved from a quark-gluon plasma. Much of this program is aligned to address fundamental questions outlined in the 2015 Long Range Plan for Nuclear Science. The broader societal impacts of this project lie in the education and training of undergraduate and graduate students in a hands-on environment. Because of the students' training and hands-on work with high tech equipment in a forefront nuclear physics laboratory, FSU graduates are in high demand and now serve in key roles in homeland security, national defense, high-tech industry, leading edge research, and STEM education. The group also is active in supporting and strengthening local school systems.
The John D. Fox accelerator laboratory focuses on programs in nuclear structure physics through particle and gamma-ray spectroscopy and nuclear astrophysics with radioactive beams produced in flight by the RESOLUT facility. In addition, the newly installed Super-Enge Split-Pole Spectrograph (SE-SPS) at the FSU accelerator is re-establishing a nationally unique resource for high-resolution spectroscopy of light- and heavy-ion reactions. The group will have a new research focus on the nuclear physics of unbound states and the super-radiance mechanism in light nuclei. Another new initiative is the development of a novel Multi-Sample Ion Chamber (FSU-MUSIC) active-target detector, to be used in the measurement of fusion cross-sections between exotic nuclei and at low energy. The detector will be combined with position-resolving silicon-detectors such that elastic and inelastic scattering, transfer-reactions and fusion can be measured simultaneously, in an effort to unravel the various contributions to the fusion mechanism at low energies. Finally, the ANASEN active-target detector is a leading detector system for reactions of astrophysical interest at FSU and also in two recent experiments at the re-accelerated beam facility REA-3 of the NSCL. This is an example of how the development of a new detector technology and methods at the local laboratory creates scientific opportunity at national facilities and is a model for the future role of the laboratory in the era of FRIB.
