ABSTRACT

This CAREER award focuses on obtaining a better understanding of the structure of the atomic nucleus and working toward a predictive model of the atomic nucleus as a function of proton number, neutron number, and energy. Both research and educational objectives will be pursued. The objective of the research component is to determine the properties of exotic, neutron-rich nuclear systems that are predicted to exhibit multiple shapes. Through experimentally quantifying this so-called shape coexistence, the research addresses the question, "How does subatomic matter organize itself and what phenomena emerge", as outlined by the broader nuclear physics community in "Reaching for the Horizon: The 2015 Long Range Plan for Nuclear Science". The experiments investigating shape coexistence are performed at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and build on the principal investigator's experience using beta-decay to study exotic nuclei. To expand the impact of this project, the educational component will provide a new and unique physics summer school experience for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Mississippi. By engaging students who are a part of this underserved portion of the population in physics, the opportunities of studying physics and performing research can be shown to a new generation of highly capable scholars.

The research that will be performed as part of this project focuses primarily on determining the lifetimes of excited states in nuclei that are predicted to exhibit multiple coexisting shapes at similar excitation energies. These lifetimes will be utilized to calculate transition strengths, which in turn enable calculations of the degree of deformation of a nucleus in a particular nuclear state. This information on the nuclear deformation serves as a unique fingerprint of different nuclear configurations and a stringent test of theoretical predictions. Transition strength information will be obtained for neutron-rich nuclei near neutron numbers of 20 and 50, which define regions where shape coexistence is predicted to occur yet remains to be quantified. The objective of the education component is to develop a physics summer school for high-school aged students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The summer school will offer students with ASD in Mississippi an opportunity to experience physics, including nuclear physics, in a highly interactive way. The summer school will be designed to be a comprehensive postsecondary transition program for students with ASD that will enable them to learn physics, socialization skills, and the opportunities of pursuing research projects and a STEM degree at a 4-year university.

This project is jointly funded by the Experimental Nuclear Physics Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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