Dr. Bulgac studies static and non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum many-body systems, typically strongly interacting fermions. Physical systems include atomic nuclei, the crust of neutron star crust, cold atom systems. Physical phenomena range from ground and excited state properties of such systems, energy density functionals, equation of state, thermodynamic properties, nuclear reactions, real-time fission dynamics, quantized vortices, their generation and their dynamics, incipient stages of quantum turbulence in fermionic superfluids. He develops and uses static and time-dependent density functional theory extended to fermionic superfluids, quantum Monte Carlo methods and other theoretical approaches, as well as their numerical implementation. Numerical calculations are performed typically on leading edge supercomputers, such a Summit (#1 on TOP 500) and Titan  (#9 on TOP 500) at ORNL, Piz Daint (#5 on TOP 500), at Swiss national Supercomputer Center, Lugano, Switzerland, and Tsubame at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. His group uses GPUs programmed with CUDA on these supercomputers in order to  perform calculations on these supercomputers as close as possible to their peak capabilities. Many details can be inferred from his publication list and personal web page, where one can find links to talks, many videos, codes, and other pertinent information.

Dr.Calderon's research focuses on the study of nuclear interactions and how they influence astrophysical processes. His research interests include nuclear structure, nuclear reactions, nuclear astrophysics, stable and radioactive ion beams, and detector development.

Radioactive capture reactions–(p, γ), (n, γ), and (α, γ)–are important both for understanding nucleosynthesis in stellar environments and for national security. For many important reactions, the target nucleus is short lived. This makes direct measurements of the reaction rates extremely challenging, and in many cases impossible. As a result, indirect techniques must be used to understand the rates of these reactions experimentally. In this project, nucleon transfer reactions such as (d, p), (⁶Li, d), and (p, t) are used to populate and study the specific resonant states through which important radiative capture reactions proceed. In the experiments, a large-area, position-sensitive silicon detector array is combined with the MDM magnetic spectrometer and gamma-ray detectors to measure the spins, spectroscopic strengths, and branching ratios of these resonant states. From these measurements, theoretical techniques are used to indirectly determine the rate of the radiative capture reaction of interest and, in turn, to improve understanding of the nucleosynthesis or national security topic of interest. Improved technologies for detecting fast neutrons are important both for improving understanding of a variety of topics in basic and applied nuclear science. These include nuclear structure away from stability, nuclear astrophysics, measurements of prompt fission neutron cross sections, and detection of hidden WMDs. Current fast neutron detectors based on plastic or liquid scintillators are limited in both position and energy resolution, which in turn affects the quality of experiments for basic and applied nuclear science. This project will explore methods of improving the position sensitivity of fast neutron detectors by coupling plastic scintillators to pixelated photon detectors – SiPMs or PMTs. Analysis of the distribution of scintillation light at the various pixels will be used to triangulate the source of the light, and thus the neutron interaction point. In particular, techniques from the medical imaging community will be applied to fast neutron detection for the first time, with the promise to improve position sensitivity of fast neutron detectors to 1 cm or better, without a significant loss in timing/energy resolution, or in efficiency.

Microscopic nuclear structure and reaction theory has undergone a major transformation in the last decade with the development of chiral effective field theory, the low-energy realization of quantum chromodynamics. My research program utilizes "next-to-first principles" chiral two- and three-body forces to derive nucleon single-particle properties (momentum- and density-dependent isoscalar and isovector optical potentials, effective masses, and spectral functions) in order to improve modeling of neutron-capture reaction rates in r-process nucleosynthesis and particle transport in experimental heavy-ion collisions.

Dr. Miguel Madurga research interest lies in the nuclear properties of nuclei with extreme neutron-proton imbalances. The atomic nucleus offers a unique problem in fundamental physics, being the smallest system self- bound by the strong force. In the field of low energy nuclear physics we explore the properties nuclear force between nucleons. The strong dependency of the nuclear force to the exact composition of neutron and protons observationally supports it being an effective (or dressed) interaction derived from the strong force.  By studying the nuclear structure of light neutron rich nuclei close to the neutron drip line, at the most extreme neutron to proton ratios we can therefore study the nuclear interaction in the most “demanding” conditions. In Dr. Madurga’s most recent work: the decay to quasi-single particle states in 133Sn was investigated; the presence of isomeric states in neutron rich Mg isotopes was used to deduce the limits of the N=20 and N=28 islands of inversion.

Prof. Marley is an experimental nuclear physicist interested the structure and decay properties of unstable atomic nuclei. Joined by a CENTAUR-supported graduate student, Marley will use transfer reaction experiments to study the structure of light-mass isotopes at the limits of β-stability. The group aims to improve knowledge of trends in the structure of light nuclei moving toward less bound systems and to test the most modern theoretical approaches to the nuclear many-body problem.

Photons emitted in heavy-ion collisions are particularly valuable probes to study the properties of the strongly interacting matter formed in heavy-ion collisions: once produced, they can escape the nuclear fireball without rescattering and thus probe its inner hot and dense regions. We will first compute the thermal photon emission rates for the temperatures and densities relevant for heavy-ion collisions in the Fermi energy regime. We will then implement these rates into transport calculations for the evolution of the fireball, by extracting local temperatures and densities. The calculated spectra will be compared to experiments to deduce the temperatures and densities reached in these reactions, and how the matter properties change as its isospin concentration is varied.

Grigory Rogachev is specializing in low energy experimental nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics. He is doing research related to structure of light and medium mass nuclei, in particular structure of exotic neutron-rich and neutron-deficient isotopes, clustering phenomena in nuclei, mechanisms of nuclear reactions, applications of nuclear physics methods for determining rates of nuclear reactions that drive nucleosynthesis and energy generation in stellar environment. Grigory Rogachev graduated from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (State University) in 1996 with Master of Science degree in Experimental Nuclear Physics. From 1996 to 1999 Grigory Rogachev was a Research Assistant at the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1999. From 2000 to 2004 he was associated with the University of Notre Dame, first as a Ph.D. Research Associate and later as a Research Assistant Professor (2003-2004). In summer of 2004 Grigory Rogachev joined Department of Physics at Florida State University as an Assistant Professor. In 2010 he was tenured and promoted to an Associate Professor. In summer of 2013 he joined faculty at the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M University.

Dr. Sobotka’s received his Ph.D. from the university of California-Berkeley in 1982 and joined the faculty at Washington University in 1984 and has remained there ever since as a professor of both chemistry and physics. His research interests include: the deexcitation modes of highly excited or exotic nuclei; the continuum structure of light nuclei; dynamics of nuclear fusion and fission; the asymmetry dependence nucleon correlations inside of nuclei; the asymmetry dependence of the equation of state of nuclear matter; advanced radiation detectors and associated electronics including ASIC design. He has worked at over 20 different accelerator or reactor laboratories. Early in his career he won a Presidential Young investigator Award and has since won the Glenn Seaborg Award for Nuclear Chemistry from the ACS and he is a fellow of the APS.

Samuel Tabor is the Norman P. Heydenberg Professor of Physics at Florida State University.  His research field is Experimental Nuclear Physics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was awarded the APS Division of Nuclear Physics mentoring award for 2019.  He has directed the research of 24 Ph.D. graduates. His research projects have included nuclear size measurements, heavy-ion fusion, heavy-ion induced fission, and many aspects of nuclear structure, including high-spin sequences and rotational bands, cross-shell excitations, giant resonances, and the interplay with nuclear structure models.

Ingo Wiedenhöver received his Ph.D. from the Universität zu Köln (Germany) in 1995, in the field of experimental nuclear physics.  He worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at Argonne National Laboratory and a Research Assistant Professor at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory of Michigan State University. In 2001 he joined the faculty at the Physics Department of Florida State University, where he is now a full Professor.  He received an “Outstanding Junior Investigator” award with the U.S. Department of Energy in 2002. He has been the director of the John D. Fox accelerator laboratory at FSU since 2017. His research is focused on the structure of exotic nuclei and nuclear astrophysics, performing experiments at National Laboratories and at FSU. He developed the in-flight exotic beam facility RESOLUT at the John D. Fox laboratory, which is used for research in Nuclear Astrophysics. He also works on improving the experimental methods for such experiments, in particular with the active-target detector ANASEN and neutron-detectors. He has also re-commissioned the Super-Enge Split-Pole spectrograph for high-resolution particle spectroscopy at the FSU laboratory. He has supervised the research of ten Ph.D. graduates.

Akram Zhanov is a senior scientist at the Texas A&M University Cyclotron Institute. His research focuses on advancing theory of low-energy nuclear reactions, neutron and proton radiative capture reactions, indirect methods in nuclear astrophysics, stellar nucleosynthesis, and few-body systems.

Aaron Couture
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Research Scientist in Physics
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Aaron Couture is engaged in the experimental study of neutron capture by hook or by crook. Neutron capture is responsible for the production of almost all of the observed elements heavier than iron. Nuclear waste transmutation concepts rely on neutron capture to reduce long-lived radionuclide inventories. Nuclear forenics relies on understanding neutron reaction networks. Where possible, these reactions are measured directly with neutron beam facilities such as LANSCE at Los Alamos. These measurements are complemented by nuclear structure studies on rare isotope beams. This structure information is used to inform and guide nuclear reaction modeling use to predict neutron capture reaction rate predictions off stability. You can also download a poster on his research here: 'Nuclear Science at LANSCE'.

Peter Kuchment 
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University Distinguished Professor
Department of Mathematics, Texas A&M University

His work is focused in the areas of mathematical physics, medical and homeland security imaging, material science, and enhancement of math education.

He had been part of a previous A&M NSF-DHS funded project devoted to prevention of smuggling illicit nuclear materials, where he with collaborators developed techniques of passive detection of presence of such sources, vs high noise background from their gamma-emission. He is currently part of a group lead by Prof. Rogachev that works on neutron detection for the same purpose of prevention of smuggling special nuclear materials.

He has written several books including 'The Radon Transform and Medical Imaging' and 'Introduction to Quantum Graphs'. You can also download few posters on his research here: 'Compton Camera Imaging' and 'Source Detection in 2D High Noise Emission Type Problems Using Cone Data'.

Shea Mosby
Website
Research Scientist
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Neutron-induced reactions play an important role in nuclear technology and national security fields such as stockpile stewardship. Physics quantities of interest include neutron-induced fission cross sections, the fission total kinetic energy release and fission fragment mass distributions. Mosby and his team are developing an instrumentation suite which, when combined with the neutron beams available at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, will provide next generation experimental constraints on these quantities. Neutron-induced reactions on short-lived nuclei are an additional area of interest which pose unique challenges and preclude many of the traditional experimental techniques. His work also includes investigating both indirect probes of the reaction mechanics and the feasibility of directly studies of neutron-induced reactions in inverse kinematics. You can also download a poster on his research here: 'Nuclear Science at LANSCE'.