The strong nuclear force that is responsible for binding together protons and neutrons within atomic nuclei - and responsible for forming the nucleons themselves - can be explained by a quantum field theory known as Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). At extreme temperatures and pressures, QCD predicts the formation of a new state of nuclear matter calle...
Published in The Astrophysical Journal
244Pu has recently been discovered in deep-sea deposits spanning the past 10 Myr, a period that includes two 60Fe pulses from nearby supernovae. 244Pu is among the heaviest r-process products, and we consider whether it was created in supernovae, which is disfavored by nucleosynthesis simulations, or in an earlier kilonova event that seeded the nea...
Emergent bulk properties of matter governed by the strong nuclear force give rise to physical phenomena across vastly different scales, ranging from the shape of atomic nuclei to the masses and radii of neutron stars. They can be accessed on Earth by measuring the spatial extent of the outer skin made of neutrons that characterises the surface of h...
We present a detailed simulation study of the signatures from the sequential decays of the triple-strange pbar p -> Ω+Ω- -> K+ΛbarK- Λ -> K+pbarπ+K-pπ- process in the PANDA central tracking system with focus on hit patterns and precise time measurement. We present a systematic approach for studying physics channels at the detector level and develop...
We demonstrate a new technique for obtaining fission data for nuclei away from $\beta$-stability. These types of data are pertinent to the astrophysical \textit{r-}process, crucial to a complete understanding of the origin of the heavy elements, and for developing a predictive model of fission. These data are also important considerations for terre...
Published in The Astrophysical Journal
There is a wealth of data on live, undecayed 60Fe (t 1/2 = 2.6 Myr) in deep-sea deposits, the lunar regolith, cosmic rays, and Antarctic snow, which is interpreted as originating from the recent explosions of at least two near-Earth supernovae. We use the 60Fe profiles in deep-sea sediments to estimate the timescale of supernova debris deposition b...
The first measurement of the polarisation of coherently photoproduced J/$\psi$ mesons in ultra-peripheral Pb$-$Pb collisions, using data at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 5.02$ TeV , is presented. The J/$\psi$ meson is measured via its dimuon decay channel in the forward rapidity interval $-4.0
Published in Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics
Opportunities for searches for phenomena beyond the Standard Model (BSM) using heavy-ions beams at high energies are outlined. Different BSM searches proposed in the last years in collisions of heavy ions, mostly at the Large Hadron Collider, are summarized. A few concrete selected cases are reviewed including searches for axion-like particles, ano...
We present an extended Bayesian analysis using Trajectum where the initial condition can now include binary scaling. For the far-from-equilibrium evolution before hydrodynamics we introduce an interpolation between free streaming and a holographically inspired evolution that exhibits fast hydrodynamization. We find strong evidence that binary scali...
A relatively large mass of b quarks makes them a convenient tool to study the quark-gluon plasma produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Thanks to this feature, b-quark production occurs mostly in initial hard scatterings and is calculable using perturbative quantum chromodynamics. Thus, beauty quarks can be considered as ideal penetra...
