Xing Fan from Harvard University and Julian Kahlbow from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are the award recipients for the 2025 Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) Visiting Scholar Program for Experimental Science. 

They received their awards for their outstanding record and potential impact on the FRIB science program.

In addition, Taiki Tanaka from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency received a travel stipend to work on a new detector design for fusion experiments at FRIB. 

FRIB initiated the FRIB Visiting Scholar Program for Experimental Science in 2016. The goal of the program is to encourage and help junior researchers to establish a research program at FRIB. The award supports short-term stays at FRIB for junior/non-tenured faculty or staff members and includes a stipend to support travel to FRIB and for establishment of a research program at FRIB.

Xing Fan

Xing Fan received his PhD in physics from Harvard University in 2022. He is currently an assistant professor of physics at Harvard after spending three years as a research assistant professor at Northwestern University. Fan received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the University of Tokyo. 

Fan’s research expertise is in the precision control and measurement of trapped electrons, atoms, and molecules for fundamental physics. By combining these techniques with rare isotopes provided by FRIB, his long-term goal is to perform fundamental physics tests with unprecedented sensitivity, such as CP-violation searches, measurement of the weak interaction in nuclei, and study of exotic forces between nuclei and electrons. During his time at FRIB as a part of the Visiting Scholar Program, Fan will take part in two collaborative activities using thorium isotopes: using the BEam COoler and LAser spectroscopy (BECOLA) facility to perform a collinear laser spectroscopy of thorium and thorium-containing ions; and the efficient extraction of thorium-227 from actinium-227 to search for a nuclear Schiff moment–detecting a potentially significant asymmetry in the charge distribution of nuclei. 

Precision atomic nuclei laser spectroscopy is a method used to study isotope properties such as nuclear spins, electric moments, and charge sizes. In addition to the Thorium isotopes in his proposal, using online beam spectroscopy along with FRIB’s offline isotope harvesting facility will help Fan expand the scope of his research.

“Traditionally, atomic physics has focused primarily on the spectroscopy of stable isotopes in the periodic table, but FRIB's capabilities will extend this to the table of nuclides broadly,” Fan said. “By developing new spectroscopy methods and integrating them with FRIB facilities, we hope to study a broad range of isotopes with unprecedented precision.”

Julian Kahlbow

Julian Kahlbow received his PhD in physics from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany. He is currently a career-track staff scientist in the Nuclear Structure Group of the Nuclear Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Previously, Julian served as a postdoc at the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and as a postdoc at the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University in Israel. 

As a part of the FRIB Visiting Scholar Program, Julian aims to work with the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) collaboration to develop an experimental program to characterize neutron correlations in neutron-rich nuclei, and to advance microscopic understanding of neutron star matter. Julian’s efforts will involve combining direct and electromagnetic excitation experiments at the MoNA setup with the development of a dedicated neutron detection system.

Julian’s research focuses on studies of nuclear structure across various scales, including both long- and short-range interactions, as well as nuclear asymmetry. At FRIB, he will have access to unprecedented beam intensities for extremely neutron-rich nuclei, which are particularly sensitive to these studies. Together with ongoing upgrades to the MoNA setup, he aims to make important contributions to the understanding of neutron correlations in atomic nuclei and related phenomena.

This award provides an opportunity for Julian to foster collaborations with scientists and students that work with MoNA, he said. With experience at other laboratories, he is excited to carry out his research at FRIB.  

“FRIB is one of the leading laboratories for radioactive-ion beam physics in the world,” he said. “We recently found that light and extremely neutron-rich nuclei can exhibit the fascinating phenomena of neutron superfluidity. This finding opens a new direction for exploring the behavior of these neutron correlations, which will help improve our understanding of neutron-star matter. FRIB is the perfect place to perform this research using different experimental tools.”

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.

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.