Physics & Astronomy Colloquium

3:30 PM, Friday, January 13, 2006

Room 155, Chem-Phys Building

Dr. Steve Yates

Department of Chemistry
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Kentucky

``Probing Nuclear Vibrations with Fast Neutrons''

Inelastic neutron scattering with accelerator-produced neutrons offers many advantages for studying low-energy nuclear structure. With monoenergetic neutrons, nuclear levels can be examined near the threshold for their excitation without the attendant complications of feeding from higher-lying states. Although the recoil velocities of the excited nuclei are small, the Doppler-shift attenuation method (DSAM) has been developed to measure nuclear level lifetimes. With these experimental techniques, we have been able to study the structure of a large number of nearly spherical nuclei and to identify collective structural features, such as multiphonon excitations of the quadrupole, octupole, and heterogeneous types.

Refreshments will be served in CP 155 at 3:15 PM