This award supports a program of research in heavy ion nuclear physics at the Nuclear Structure Laboratory, State University of New York at Stony Brook, using a superconducting booster accelerator in conjunction with a model FN tandem accelerator. The research is carried out by SUNY Stony Brook staff and provides for the training of graduate students in nuclear science, accelerator physics and instrumentation development. The objective of much of the research is to find how nuclei behave under extreme conditions of high spin and/or high temperature. Another effort involves the application of laser spectroscopy and atomic physics methods to determine nuclear moments and properties of radioactive atoms. Nucleus-nucleus reaction mechanisms are probed over a range of incident energies from below the Coulomb barrier, where collective nuclear response is important, to higher energies where individual nucleon-nucleon collisional aspect begin to be evident. The project also entails new instrumentation and accelerator development, and continuing facility refinement.
