IOP Groups
Past Events
An archive of events organised by the Nuclear Physics Group.
Meetings from 2008
University of the West of Scotland, R Herzberg and W Nazarewicz: Workshop on the Structure of the Heaviest Elements (12 March 2008)
This meeting focussed on both theoretical and experimental structural research of the transfermium elements. It was attended by 24 participants. The organisers have summarised the events of the meeting on the University of the West of Scotland's webpages.
University of York, D Jenkins: Science in Society (7 February 2008)
This was a science communication orientated meeting in aid of public understanding of science. Two of the talks from the meeting, which contain very helpful information regarding science communication, are available for download below:
Meetings from 2007
Lancaster University, M Joyce: Dedicated Digital Methods for Neutron and Gamma-Ray Processing (17 December 2007)
The events of this meeting are summarised here by the organisier, M Joyce:
On the 17th December 2007 a half-day meeting was held at Lancaster University entitled 'Dedicated Digital Methods for Neutron and Gammaray Scanning. Four speakers presented their research at the meeting from the universities of Lancaster, Liverpool, Sheffield and from the National Physical Laboratory and Scionix BV. The meeting was a great success, attracting approximately 25 delegates from across the UK and including representatives from industry such as AWE, Hybrid Instruments Ltd. and John Caunt Scientific. Much discussion was stimulated by the meeting concerning applications in homeland security and the lack of availability of fast digital electronic system design capabilities. Delegates enjoyed a Christmas lunch and a mince pie or two before they left for home.
University of Liverpool, R-D Hertzberg: Physics Opportunities with Monoenergetic MeV Photons from a Compton Backscattering (CBS) Facility at 4GLS (1 June 2007)
This meeting program can be found on the organiser's website and the report on the event is available here.
Annual Nuclear Physics Group Conference (5-5 April 2007)
This year's annual conference took place jointly with the Particle Physics Group. J Al-Khalili (Surrey) and Mike Green (Royal Holloway) organised this conference in Surrey. The conference took place Tuesday 3 until Thursday 5 April. The meeting is summarised by the organisers in this report.
Meetings from 2006
University of Edinburgh, D Watts, M Chartier: Neutron Skins and the Symmetry Energy (15 December 2006)
This meeting was well received and attended by about 40 people. The programme consisted of four talks:
Paul Stevenson, from the University of Surrey, presented an excellent overview of the underlying physics motivations behind the studies of neutron skins (equation of state of nuclear matter and symmetry energy, astrophysics, nuclear structure, etc.).
Guido Urciuoliu, from INFN Rome, was invited to present the PREX experiment at JLab, of which he is the spokesperson, and which aims to study the neutron skin thickness in 208Pb from parity violating electron scattering measurements.
Peter Egelhof, from GSI Darmstadt, presented recent results of proton scattering measurements of light halo nuclei (Li, He and B) performed with the active target IKAR, as well as the future prospects at FAIR/NUSTAR with the NESR storage ring experiments (EXL, ELISE and AIC).
Claire Tarbet, from the University of Edinburgh, presented the measurement of the 208Pb neutron skin thickness using coherent ?0 photoproduction with the crystal ball at MAMI and the study of the neutron halo distribution in 6He using the 6Li(???+)6He reaction with Ge6 at MAMI.
The programme of the meeting was advertised on the web, where the PDF files of the talks can be downloaded (or will be available shortly).
University of Edinburgh, A Laird, A Murphy and M Aliotta: Nuclear Astrophysics (26 May 2006)
A Laird, A Murphy and M Aliotta recently organised a ½-day meeting in Edinburgh on Nuclear Astrophysics to discuss current research activities carried out in the UK in the field of explosive phenomena and nucleosynthesis. The speakers were: Sean Ryan, University of Hertfordshire (on Nucleosynthetic signatures from early epochs of the Universe), Tom O'Brien, University of Manchester/Jodrell Bank Observatory (on Nova explosions and their nebular remnants), Thomas Rauscher, University of Basel (on Understanding nucleosynthesis and stellar explosions: a challenge for modern nuclear physics) and Alex Murphy, University of Edinburgh (on Experimental nuclear astrophysics of explosive environments) The meeting, was attended by about 20-25 people, was very successful and there will hopefully be a follow-up at some stage.
2006 Institute of Physics conference
University of York, D Jenkins (19-21 April 2006)
This was a good meeting, which was well attended. 130 people visited over 3 days with 6 industrial sponsors. Overseas speakers included Faisal Azaiez, Bertram Blank and Peter Reiter. Outings included the York Brewery and the conference dinner was held at St William's college. The inclusion of high quality student talks in the programme was felt by many to have been a very good thing and it was recommended that this happens again in the future. All feeback received was good. However, there was a general feeling that information about future conferences should, in general, be send out much sooner than has happened this time.
Meetings from 2005
University of York, D Jenkins and R-D Hertzberg: Physics with segmented germanium detectors (7 December 2005)
40 people attended this meeting, 2 from industry. The meeting was arranged by D Jenkins and R-D Hertzberg and included the following speakers, D Watts (Detection of High-Energy Particles with the Edinburgh Germanium Telescope), A Boston (Compton Cameras and PET Scanning), D Jenkins (Search for Two-Photon Emission in 72-Ge), J Gerl (GSI: Physics Opportunities with Segmented Detectors). There were lots of questions after each talk and the meeting was generally well received.
The Royal Observatory Edinburgh, A Murphy: Supernovae (26 October 2005)
The motivation for the meeting was a recognition that while there exists in the UK several research groups working one-way-or-another on supernovae, there is currently little inter-group communication, especially with the nuclear physics community. With this in mind, speakers were invited to present the status of UK contributions to observation and interpretation of both accretion driven and core collapse supernovae. The meeting was attended by in total about 15 people. The work of the UK nuclear astrophysics community was then presented, with special attention to future directions relevant to supernovae. Finally, the mechanism by which these two fields are linked - that of modelling - was presented.
The schedule of talks was as follows:
Type 1a supernovae - Surveys for Cosmology and Implications for Progenitors
Justin Bronder, Oxford University
Observations of Core Collapse Supernovae at Late Epochs
Peter Meikle, Imperial College
Determining the Physical Parameters of Core Collapse Supernovae Progenitors
Stephen Smartt, Queens University Belfast
Nuclear Astrophysics of Relevance to Supernovae
Alex Murphy, University of Edinburgh
Multi-Dimensional Simulations of Supernovae
Ewald Müller, MPA Garching
The meeting was thought to be useful, providing for all parties concerned a better understanding of what activity was ongoing in related fields. Moreover, the personal connections established will be useful in the future. The necessity of inviting from overseas a speaker to discuss modelling of explosive astrophysical environments was identified as the primary reason for the poor communication between the astronomy and nuclear communities. The likelihood of a suitable stellar modelling group developing in the UK in the near future, although desirable, is low. Thus continuing discussion between the nuclear and astronomy groups remains vital. To this end, a future development is supported: the nuclear astrophysicists present proposed developing a formal discussion network for the UK, with the primary aim of ensuring that all UK research relevant to explosive nucleosynthesis is recorded and advertised, enhancing opportunities for collaboration and added value from research.
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