Physics Division 1996 to 1998
Physics Division 1996 to 1998This report covers the research and development activities of the Physics Division for the 1997 and 1998 fiscal years, beginning October 1, 1996, and ending September 30, 1998. As you have already observed, we have decided to produce our Progress Reports on the World Wide Web. This change will serve many purposes, including the saving of printing costs and providing access to our work for many scientists who otherwise would be unaware of us. Please send us any comments you may have on this change.
The activities of the Division continue to be concentrated in experimental and theoretical nuclear physics and experimental and theoretical atomic physics. In addition, there are smaller programs in data compilation and evaluation. As you will see, our scientific productivity remains extremely high in spite of the fact that many of the staff are engaged in development of the HRIBF and other new facilities.
In fiscal years 1993 and 1994 the Physics Division lost over one third of its Ph.D. staff. This loss was a serious blow to the Division's ability to carry out its research and development programs and to compete with programs at other facilities. A high priority for the past four years has been a replenishment of our historically excellent staff through hiring of exceptional candidates. Since 1995 we have hired 18 new Ph.D. staff and several technical support personnel. I believe our current staff is as strong, or stronger than at any time in recent history and more than competitive with the staff at similar laboratories. In 1996, the White House established an annual award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, to recognize 60 outstanding young scientists. At the same time, the DOE established the DOE Young Independent Scientist Award. The ORNL Physics Division has had a winner of both of these awards in each of the three years the awards have been presented (Michael Smith-1996, David Dean-1997, and Tony Mezzacappa-1998). This fact alone attests to the outstanding quality of the new additions to our already excellent staff.
Over the past two years, several members of the Physics Division have been honored as winners of awards associated with their research or outstanding job performance. These awards have been received from the general physics community, from ORNL, and from the Lockheed Martin Corporation, the operator of ORNL. Among the awards were the 1998 Davisson-Germer Prize presented to Sheldon Datz, the E. Mach Honorary Medal for Merit in the Physical Sciences presented to Frank Plasil, and the highest recognition for research at Lockheed Martin, the NOVA Award, presented to Paul Koehler, Klaus Guber (Computational Physics and Engineering Division), and Robert Spencer (Computational Physics and Engineering Division) for astrophysics research carried out at ORELA.
In December of 1996, the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility received approval to begin routine operation. Since that time much progress has been made toward the goal of providing the nuclear physics community with a radioactive ion beam facility that is capable of producing a wide variety of high-quality radioactive beams for research in both nuclear structure physics and nuclear astrophysics. During the past two years we have devoted about one year to improve the reliability and quality of operation of the accelerator systems, especially the ORIC. This has been very successful; we have greatly increased the extraction efficiency and decreased the start-up time for the cyclotron. Following this upgrade, in addition to providing beams of arsenic radioactive ions, we have produced by the ISOL technique an accelerated beam of 17F. This beam, long sought after by the astrophysics community, has now been used in a first experiment. In addition to these successes, ion source and target developments were made to enable us to plan in the near future to produce beams of 18F, 58Cu, 56Ni, and many neutron-rich nuclides. A summary of the HRIBF work is provided in this report along with supporting activities of the Joint Institute for Heavy Ion Research.
The nuclear structure, reaction, and astrophysics experimental programs cover a broad spectrum of activities that is increasingly focused on physics that may be best addressed using radioactive ion beams. Many experiments by researchers in the RIB Physics Section have provided exciting new results that are presented in this review. During this reporting period members of this section have completed development, installation, and commissioning of new experimental apparatus for the HRIBF, including the RMS and DRS and their auxiliary detectors.
During this reporting period the work of the relativistic heavy-ion program has shifted from experiments at CERN to completion of the PHENIX muon arm and electromagnetic calorimeter and preparations for experiments at RHIC using PHENIX. This reporting period covered the conclusion of data-taking activities for the CERN WA98 experiment. The final run on that experiment was held in late 1996 and was highly successful. Work on the PHENIX project constitutes a major responsibility of the Division. These activities are discussed in detail.
A continuing major area of experimental research for the Division is atomic physics. This activity is concentrated in two groups: accelerator-based atomic physics, centered primarily at the EN Tandem, but extending from very low electron-molecular ion collision energies at the Stockholm CRYRING to ultrarelativistic energies at the CERN SPS; and low-energy atom collisions, based primarily at the ECR ion source facility. These programs also operate, respectively, the EN Tandem and the ECR Ion Source Facility as "user resources." A report on these activities is provided.
The theoretical physics activity in the Division concentrates on the areas of atomic physics, nuclear physics, nuclear and atomic astrophysics, and physics at the nuclear-particle interface, with a particular emphasis on applications of high-performance computing. These efforts, which represent independent studies as well as support to the experimental program, are presented in this review. Included are results of work involving long-term theory visitors of the Joint Institute for Heavy Ion Research.
Over the past two years the Physics Division has worked on plans for two major projects that would have a significant impact on the long-term research of the Division. The larger of the projects is a plan for the construction of a $250-million next-generation ISOL Radioactive Beam Facility at ORNL. The plan would use a small fraction of the 1-GeV proton beam from the SNS linac as the driver beam for producing radionuclides that would be accelerated in a new superconducting linear accelerator. The second project is the construction of a major neutrino facility that would be built at the SNS and detect neutrinos from the SNS targets. The latter project is being planned by a collaboration of over 60 scientists from 23 institutions.
This report also includes highlights from our Division Operations work, especially in the areas of ES&H. The Physics Division has an excellent record in safety, health, and environmental issues, and we devote considerable time to ensuring that the good record is continued. We treat ES&H as an integral part of our Division R&D effort and will continue to do so.
The report concludes with general information on publications, Division
activities, and personnel changes.
F. E. Bertrand
March 1999