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- Zanon, I., et al.
(author)
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High-Precision Spectroscopy of 20O Benchmarking Ab Initio Calculations in Light Nuclei
- 2023
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In: Physical Review Letters. - : American Physical Society. - 0031-9007 .- 1079-7114. ; 131:26
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The excited states of unstable 20O were investigated via γ-ray spectroscopy following the 19O(d,p)20O reaction at 8 AMeV. By exploiting the Doppler shift attenuation method, the lifetimes of the 2+2 and 3+1 states were firmly established. From the γ-ray branching and E2/M1 mixing ratios for transitions deexciting the 2+2 and 3+1 states, the B(E2) and B(M1) were determined. Various chiral effective field theory Hamiltonians, describing the nuclear properties beyond ground states, along with a standard USDB interaction, were compared with the experimentally obtained data. Such a comparison for a large set of γ-ray transition probabilities with the valence space in medium similarity renormalization group ab initio calculations was performed for the first time in a nucleus far from stability. It was shown that the ab initio approaches using chiral effective field theory forces are challenged by detailed high-precision spectroscopic properties of nuclei. The reduced transition probabilities were found to be a very constraining test of the performance of the ab initio models.
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- Giovinazzo, J., et al.
(author)
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4D-imaging of drip-line radioactivity by detecting proton emission from 54mNi pictured with ACTAR TPC
- 2021
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In: Nature Communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2041-1723. ; 12:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Proton radioactivity was discovered exactly 50 years ago. First, this nuclear decay mode sets the limit of existence on the nuclear landscape on the neutron-deficient side. Second, it comprises fundamental aspects of both quantum tunnelling as well as the coupling of (quasi)bound quantum states with the continuum in mesoscopic systems such as the atomic nucleus. Theoretical approaches can start either from bound-state nuclear shell-model theory or from resonance scattering. Thus, proton-radioactivity guides merging these types of theoretical approaches, which is of broader relevance for any few-body quantum system. Here, we report experimental measurements of proton-emission branches from an isomeric state in 54mNi, which were visualized in four dimensions in a newly developed detector. We show that these decays, which carry an unusually high angular momentum, ℓ = 5 and ℓ = 7, respectively, can be approximated theoretically with a potential model for the proton barrier penetration and a shell-model calculation for the overlap of the initial and final wave functions.
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- Giovinazzo, J., et al.
(author)
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Proton 3D tracking and emission time from a short-lived isomer with ACTAR TPC
- 2022
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In: Nuclear Instruments & Methods in Physics Research. Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors, and Associated Equipment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0168-9002. ; 1042
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- An experiment was conducted at the GANIL/LISE3 facility to produce the 10+ isomer of 54Ni and measure its proton radioactivity decay branches. The proton detection was achieved with the ACTAR TPC device that enabled the separation of the small signal of the emitted proton from the large signal of the implanted ion, while the decay half-life is of the order of 150 ns. From the measured data, the emitted proton track length and the decay time of the ion can be extracted simultaneously. The full proton radioactivity pattern could be established, with two emission branches and their relative branching ratio. Data processing and analysis that allowed to identify and separate the ion and the proton signals in order to reconstruct the particles trajectories and decay time are detailed. The evaluation of the detection efficiency for the proton radioactivity branches based on a full simulation is described.
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- Rudolph, D., et al.
(author)
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Mirror symmetry at mass A = 54: E4 effective charges near doubly magic 56Ni
- 2022
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In: Physics Letters B. - : Elsevier BV. - 0370-2693. ; 830
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Proton-emission branches of the 10+ isomer in the Tz=−1 nucleus 54Ni have been imaged with the active target and time projection chamber (ACTAR TPC) in an experiment conducted at the Grand Accélérateur National d'Ions Lourds (GANIL). The completed decay scheme allows derivation of the reduced transition strengths, B(E2;10+→8+) and B(E4;10+→6+), for the two competing γ-ray transitions. By means of a comparison with their well-known ‘mirror transitions’ in Tz=+1 54Fe, and aided by a variety of shell-model calculations in the fp model space, effective charges for E4 transitions near N=Z 56Ni can be deduced: επ≈1.40 and εν≈0.30. Mirror-energy differences are explored with various shell-model interactions and isospin-symmetry breaking terms.
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- Sarmiento Pico, Luis, et al.
(author)
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Elucidating the nature of the proton radioactivity and branching ratio on the first proton emitter discovered 53mCo
- 2023
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In: Nature Communications. - 2041-1723. ; 14
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The observation of a weak proton-emission branch in the decay of the 3174keV 53mCo isomeric state marked the discovery of proton radioactivity in atomic nuclei in 1970. Here we show, based on the partial half-lives and the decay energies of the possible proton-emission branches, that the exceptionally high angular momentum barriers, lp = 9 and lp = 7, play a key role in hindering the proton radioactivity from 53mCo, making them very challenging to observe and calculate. Indeed, experiments had to wait decades for significant advances in accelerator facilities and multi-faceted state-of-the-art decay stations to gain full access to all observables. Combining data taken with the TASISpec decay station at the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and the ACTAR TPC device on LISE3 at GANIL, France, we measured their branching ratios as bp1 = 1.3(1)% and bp2 = 0.025(4)%. These results were compared to cutting-edge shell-model and barrier penetration calculations. This description reproduces the order of magnitude of the branching ratios and partial half-lives, despite their very small spectroscopic factors.
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- Schijven, Dick, et al.
(author)
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Large-scale analysis of structural brain asymmetries in schizophrenia via the ENIGMA consortium
- 2023
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In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 120:14
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Left-right asymmetry is an important organizing feature of the healthy brain that may be altered in schizophrenia, but most studies have used relatively small samples and heterogeneous approaches, resulting in equivocal findings. We carried out the largest case-control study of structural brain asymmetries in schizophrenia, with MRI data from 5,080 affected individuals and 6,015 controls across 46 datasets, using a single image analysis protocol. Asymmetry indexes were calculated for global and regional cortical thickness, surface area, and subcortical volume measures. Differences of asymmetry were calculated between affected individuals and controls per dataset, and effect sizes were meta-analyzed across datasets. Small average case-control differences were observed for thickness asymmetries of the rostral anterior cingulate and the middle temporal gyrus, both driven by thinner left-hemispheric cortices in schizophrenia. Analyses of these asymmetries with respect to the use of antipsychotic medication and other clinical variables did not show any significant associations. Assessment of age- and sex-specific effects revealed a stronger average leftward asymmetry of pallidum volume between older cases and controls. Case-control differences in a multivariate context were assessed in a subset of the data (N = 2,029), which revealed that 7% of the variance across all structural asymmetries was explained by case-control status. Subtle case-control differences of brain macrostructural asymmetry may reflect differences at the molecular, cytoarchitectonic, or circuit levels that have functional relevance for the disorder. Reduced left middle temporal cortical thickness is consistent with altered left-hemisphere language network organization in schizophrenia.
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