FRIB researchers are part of a team that measured the deuteron inelastic scattering of beryllium-10 and had its results published in Physical Review Letters (“Near-Threshold Dipole Strength in 10Be with Isoscalar Character”).
Scientists studied how deuterons (a type of hydrogen nucleus made of a proton and a neutron) interact with beryllium-10. They found a resonance at 7.27 million electron-volts (MeV), just below the energy at which alpha (𝛼) particles could be released. This suggests that beryllium-10 excited at this energy has a strong 𝛼-cluster structure, behaving like two alpha particles and two neutrons stuck together. The findings were confirmed using a four-body model that simulates these interactions. The tools used in this study will be important for future research into rare and exotic atomic nuclei, in particular for clustering in nuclei.
The experiment was conducted at the ReA6 accelerator beam facility of FRIB’s predecessor, the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). The scattered deuterons were measured using the Active Target-Time Projection Chamber (AT-TPC).
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Office of Nuclear Physics, the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad through the Programmes “Ramón y Cajal,” the National Key Research and Development Project, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Michigan State University (MSU) operates the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) as a user facility for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC), with financial support from and furthering the mission of the DOE-SC Office of Nuclear Physics. Hosting the most powerful heavy-ion accelerator, FRIB enables scientists to make discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes in order to better understand the physics of nuclei, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions, and applications for society, including in medicine, homeland security, and industry. User facility operation is supported by the DOE-SC Office of Nuclear Physics as one of 28 DOE-SC user facilities.
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of today’s most pressing challenges. For more information, visit energy.gov/science.