Observation of Correlations between Spin and Transverse Momenta in Back-to-Back Dihadron Production at CLAS12
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Results for “NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS”
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New Perspectives on Spectroscopic Factor Quenching from Reactions
The evolution of single-particle strengths as the neutron-to-proton asymmetry changes informs us of the importance of short- and long-range correlations in nuclei and has therefore been extensively studied for the last two decades. Surprisingly, the strong asymmetry dependence of these strengths and their extreme values for highly asymmetric nuclei inferred from knockout reaction measurements on a target nucleus are not consistent with what is extracted from electron-induced, transfer, and quasi-free reaction data, constituting a two-decade old puzzle. This work presents the first consistent analysis of one-nucleon transfer and one-nucleon knockout data, in which theoretical uncertainties associated with the nucleon-nucleus effective interactions considered in the reaction models are quantified using a Bayesian analysis. Here, our results demonstrate that, taking into account these uncertainties, the spectroscopic strengths of loosely bound nucleons extracted from both probes agree with each other and, although there are still discrepancies for deeply bound nucleons, the slope of the asymmetry dependence of the single-particle strengths inferred from transfer and knockout reactions are consistent within 1 σ . Both probes are consistent with a small asymmetry dependence of these strengths. The uncertainties obtained in this work represent a lower bound and are already significantly larger than the original estimates.
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Neck Rupture and Scission Neutrons in Nuclear Fission
Just before a nucleus undergoes fission, a neck is formed between the emerging fission fragments. It is widely accepted that this neck undergoes a rather violent rupture, despite the absence of unambiguous experimental evidence. The main difficulty in addressing the neck rupture and saddle-to-scission stages of fission is that both are highly nonequilibrium processes. Here, we present the first fully microscopic characterization of the scission mechanism, along with the spectrum and the spatial distribution of scission neutrons (SNs), and some upper limit estimates for the emission of charged particles. The spectrum of SNs has a distinct angular distribution, with neutrons emitted in roughly equal numbers in the equatorial plane and along the fission axis. They carry an average energy around 3±0.5 MeV for the fission of 236 U, 240 Pu, and 252 Cf, and a maximum of 16–18 MeV. We estimate a conservative lower bound of 9%–14% of the total emitted neutrons are produced at scission.
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Nuclear and neutron-star matter from local chiral interactions
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Tests and calibrations of nuclear track detectors (CR39) for operation in high neutron flux
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Ab initio study of ${(\nu_\ell,\ell^-)}$ and ${(\overline{\nu}_\ell,\ell^+)}$ inclusive scattering in $^{12}\hbox{C}$: confronting the MiniBooNE and $\hbox{T2K CCQE}$ data
We carry out an ab initio calculation of the neutrino flux-folded inclusive cross sections, measured on $^{12}$C by the MiniBooNE and T2K collaborations in the charged-current quasielastic regime. The calculation is based on realistic two- and three-nucleon interactions, and on a realistic nuclear electroweak current with one-and two-nucleon terms that are constructed consistently with these interactions and reproduce low-energy electroweak transitions. Numerically exact quantum Monte Carlo methods are utilized to compute the nuclear weak response functions, by fully retaining many-body correlations in the initial and final states and interference effects between one- and two-body current contributions. We employ a nucleon axial form factor of the dipole form with $\Lambda_A = 1.0$ or $1.15$ GeV, the latter more in line with a very recent lattice QCD determination. The calculated cross sections are found to be in good agreement with the neutrino data of MiniBooNE and T2K, and antineutrino MiniBooNE data, yielding a consistent picture of nuclei and their electroweak properties across a wide regime of energy and momenta.
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Colloquium : Neutrino detectors as tools for nuclear security
For over 40 years, physicists have discussed possible uses for neutrino detectors in nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, and fissile materials security. Neutrinos are an attractive fission signature because they readily pass through matter. The same property makes neutrinos challenging to detect in systems that would be practical for nuclear security applications. This Colloquium presents a broad overview of several potential neutrino applications, including the near-field monitoring of known reactors, far-field monitoring of known or discovery of undeclared reactors, detection of reactor waste streams, and detection of nuclear explosions. Recent detector advances have made near-field monitoring feasible, whereas farther-field reactor detection and waste stream detection monitoring may be possible in some cases with further research and development. Very long-range reactor monitoring and nuclear explosion detection do not seem feasible for the foreseeable future due to considerable physical and/or practical constraints.
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ADC Nonlinearity Correction for the Majorana Demonstrator
Imperfections in analog-to-digital conversion cannot be ignored when signal digitization requirements demand both wide dynamic range and high resolution, as is the case for the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR 76 Ge neutrinoless double beta decay search. Enabling the experiment's high-resolution spectral analysis and efficient pulse shape discrimination required careful measurement and correction of ADC nonlinearites. Here, a simple measurement protocol was developed that did not require sophisticated equipment or lengthy data taking campaigns. A slope-dependent hysteresis was observed and characterized. A correction applied to digitized waveforms prior to signal processing reduced the differential and integral nonlinearites by an order of magnitude, eliminating these as dominant contributions to the systematic energy uncertainty at the double-beta decay Q value.
46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
Inclusion of $K\Lambda $ electroproduction data in a coupled channel analysis
Exclusive electroproduction reactions provide an access to the structure of excited baryons. To extract electroproduction multipoles encoding this information, the Julich-Bonn-Washington (JBW) analysis framework is extended to the analysis of differential cross sections in KΛ electroproduction. Here this update enlarges the scope of previous coupled-channel analyses of pions and eta mesons, with photoproduction reactions as boundary condition in all analyzed electroproduction reactions. Polarization observables are predicted and compared to recent CLAS data. The comparison shows the relevance of these data to pin down baryon properties.
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Comparative study of quarkonium transport in hot QCD matter
This document summarizes the efforts of the EMMI Rapid Reaction Task Force on “Suppression and (re)generation of quarkonium in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC”, centered around their 2019 and 2022 meetings. It provides a review of existing experimental results and theoretical approaches, including lattice QCD calculations and semiclassical and quantum approaches for the dynamical evolution of quarkonia in the quark-gluon plasma as probed in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. The key ingredients of the transport models are itemized to facilitate comparisons of calculated quantities such as reaction rates, binding energies, and nuclear modification factors. A diagnostic assessment of the various results is attempted and coupled with an outlook for the future.
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Discovery of Nuclides Project
The Discovery of Nuclides project compiles detailed discovery information for all naturally occurring and artificially produced nuclides. The short abstracts for each nuclide include the authors, institution, country, year, method of discovery, and reference. The database contains over 3300 nuclides and is continuously updated as new nuclides are discovered. The work is performed at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) and is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Physics under Grant No. DE-SC0016948 and Michigan State University. The FRIB Nuclear Data group is responsible for coordinating and updating the database.
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Discovery of Isomer Project
Database of the discovery of isomers of all nuclides
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Comparative Critical Mass Calculations for NNL and ENDF/B-VIII.0 Zirconium Hydride Thermal Neutron Scattering Laws
Zirconium hydride (ZrH x ) is a moderator material for TRIGA reactors and historical space reactor systems, such as SNAP-10A. Thermal neutron scattering laws (TSL) for two phases of this material, δ and ε, have been previously evaluated by Naval Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) and submitted to the National Nuclear Data Center (NNDC) for inclusion in the US national ENDF/B-VIII.1 nuclear data library. In contrast to the current ENDF/B-VIII.0 TSL evaluations, which consider only a single phase, the new evaluations are derived from separate ab initio calculations for both phases and include coherent elastic effects of the zirconium sublattice. To estimate the impact of these changes to the TSL evaluation of this material, comparative critical mass calculations were performed with MC21 for homogenous mixtures of high- enriched uranium (HEU) and ZrH x in bare and water reflected sphere configurations. These calculations yield an impact on the estimated critical mass as a function of 235 U loading density with maximum differences as large as 1% - 5% for over-moderated thermal spectrum systems. Consequently, the NNL TSL evaluations are anticipated to have a small impact on criticality calculations of thermal reactor systems regardless of the material phase. Nevertheless, characteristic differences exist in the predicted thermal spectra as function of energy for the two sets of TSL evaluations, which are attributed to difference in the underlying phonon density of states of hydrogen bound in ZrH x .
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Data Testing of Polyethylene Thermal Scattering Law with New Thermal Epithermal eXperiments (TEX) Plutonium Baseline Benchmark, PU-MET-MIXED-002
Five plutonium baseline experiments completed in September of 2018 from the Thermal Epithermal eXperiments (TEX) program have been accepted by the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project as PU-MET-MIXED-002 and will be included in the 2020 version of the handbook. The experiments were made up of stacked layers of plutonium Zero Power Physics Reactor (ZPPR) plates moderated by polyethylene (PE, chemical formula C2H4) to varying degrees to create configurations with five different neutron spectra, including one fast configuration, one thermal configuration, and three mixed configurations. Calculations of the benchmark show overprediction of k eff when using the most recent release of the Evaluated Nuclear Data File Version B (ENDF/B) library release (VIII.0) cross sections, particularly when compared to the previous ENDF/B-VII.1 results. One potential source of overprediction was hypothesized to be the new Molecular Dynamics (MD) generated PE Thermal Scattering Law (TSL). The overprediction was shown via calculation to not be caused by the new ENDF/B-VIII.0 thermal scattering law, and in fact the overprediction was mitigated by the new PE TSL.
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Effect of Nuclear Data Covariances on Integral Experiment Design with Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analysis
Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) uses MCNP6.2 and the Whisper code for criticality safety analyses of the Hanford Tank Farm. Together the codes derive baseline upper subcritical limits (USLs) for the waste models using experimental benchmarks. Whisper returns higher USLs, i.e. , has less of a conservative penalty, when the neutronic similarity of the experimental benchmarks to the application is high. Unfortunately, few critical benchmarks have high similarity to the Hanford tanks. The waste in the tanks is highly dilute in plutonium and contains large masses of weakly neutron-absorbing elements like iron and manganese. Experimental benchmarks typically have low sensitivity to these absorbers because they are present as structural materials. Lacking similar benchmarks, new Thermal Epithermal eXperiment (TEX) configurations with high Pu content and interstitial iron absorbers have been designed for the criticality safety validation. The features of the design have been iterated upon to maximize the similarity between the experiment and different Hanford waste models. The similarity is quantified with sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification using the representativity coefficient, or c k . The representativity calculation requires nuclear data covariances, which may differ between nuclear data libraries and between library versions. Because of these variations, the optimal design may depend on the nuclear data covariances library. A scenario can be envisioned where an experiment is designed, and c k is maximized, with one set of covariance data. However, when the covariance data is changed, say from ENDF/B-VII.1 to ENDF/B-VIII.0, and the benchmark is used in a criticality safety evaluation, the experiment becomes suboptimal with respect to c k . In this paper, we present how the optimal design of the new TEX experiments varied depending on the nuclear data covariances used to calculate c k . We compare ENDF/B-VII.1 and ENDF/B-VIII.0, as if the library had been updated since the design of the experiment. Additionally, we use JEFF3.3 to simulate if the covariance data of a different library had been used. The results show that the covariances do have an important effect on the designs, less so for thermal systems (where the data are more consistent between evaluations) and more so for epithermal systems where more differences exist.
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Low-Energy Reactions of the n+ 233 U Nuclear Compound System and Its Initial Validation
The strong negative gradient as a function of the epithermal fission fraction (FEPIT) observed in both Evaluated Nuclear Data File (ENDF)/B-VII.1 and ENDF/B-VIII.0 nuclear data libraries poses new challenges for the verification of the n+ 233 U nuclear compound system, especially in the low energy range. The aim of this paper is to summarize the steps forward to consistently update the 233 U evaluated nuclear data to attain improved performance in benchmark calculations; this work is described in detail in a forthcoming paper by Pigni et al.
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Magnetic Microcalorimeter (MMC) Gamma-Ray Detectors with Ultra-High Energy Resolution. Comprehensive Technology Readiness Assessment
Magnetic Microcalorimeter (MMC) gamma ray detectors have demonstrated very high energy resolution of 38 eV FWHM for gamma ray energies below 100 keV. This is an order or magnitude better than conventional HPGe detector and can remove most line-overlap problems in NDA by gamma spectroscopy below ~130 keV. Unlike superconducting transition edge sensors (TESs), MMCs have a reproducible and almost perfectly linear response, which greatly simplifies adding spectra from different detector pixels and reduces systematic errors in quantitative assays. The instrument is currently at TRL-5 but could advance to TRL-6 by improving the signal processing software and using the system for the quantitative analysis of a safeguards sample provided by e.g. the IAEA. Making MMC detectors commercially viable and used more widely then depends on making the technology more reliable, specifically by increasing the device uniformity and yield, and by developing commercial software. This situation is often only half-jokingly referred to as the “valley of death” and could be addressed though the SBIR program. Our collaborators at STAR Cryoelectronics LLC are well qualified to further advance MMC development, and XIA LLC is well-positioned to develop the data acquisition system and write the software for MMC readout. In addition, the advance to TRL-6 would be desirable to increase the visibility and showcase the value of MMC spectrometers, e.g. by placing one of them into the Safeguards Analytical Laboratory (SAL) at the IAEA, whose NDA experts have recently started to show interest in cryogenic detector technology. As a result of this LCP, we also now have an instrument at LLNL that we will use for various applications of MMCs in nuclear safeguards and science. We are confident that as the number of high-profile results increases, so will the interest in and commercial viability of this technology.
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