Our mission is to support US-based senior experimental Postdocs and finishing graduating PhD students in the low-energy nuclear physics field who are about to take the next step in their careers. Due to the COVID-19 situation, junior people are currently being robbed of the opportunity to travel to conferences, show their work, and meet and …

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The global pandemic of 2020 does not stop the REU program. Several students across the US joined the ND-REU program and are working remotely, on data analysis, simulations and modeling. Cassidy Favorite from Hendrix College and Ryan Buechele from Case Western Reserve University joined my group this summer to work on Geant4 simulations for the …

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Last week a team from Notre Dame, Dan Robertson and Orlando Gomez, were at the Sanford Underground Research Facility working 4850 feet underground to install HECTOR, Notre Dame’s high-efficiency, gamma-ray summing detector. The combined setup, called CASTOR, is now ready and soon be measuring alpha-capture reactions relevant for a wide and varied range of stellar burning …

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Tessa Klein, a physics junior, has been working on Geant4 simulations for HECTOR that will help our group understand the structure of the background in our data that is generated by cosmic muons. She is exploring the possibility to include veto detectors around HECTOR to reduce the background and, recently, started simulations of HECTOR performance …

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  A team of faculty from the Nuclear Science Laboratory, Daniel Robertson, Manoel Couder, Anna Simon and Joachim Goerres, led by Michael Wiescher received 4-year support from the NSF to continue measurements at the underground accelerator facility investigating reactions important for the stellar nucleosynthesis processes. The Compact Accelerator System for Performing Astrophysical Research (CASPAR), undertakes National ScienceFoundation (NSF) funded research at …

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Sean Kelly presented the results of his work as an REU student at Notre Dame during a Conference Experience for Undergraduates at the APS DNP meeting that took place in Crystal City, VA. Sean is using the data from HECTOR’s commissioning run to understand the level scheme of 28Si and figure out the origin of …

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Sean Kelly and undergradute who is currently analyzing data from our last HECTOR experiment, presented a poster at  the University of Notre Dame Undergraduate Research and Experiential Learning Showcase. Sean talked about the p-process nucleosynthesis and details of the gamma-ray summing technique.

Rebeka presented her work at the conference organized by the Association for Women in Science Notre Dame Chapter. Her poster on the p-process nucleosynthesis was ranked third  in the “Best poster competition”! Click here to read more: https://physics.nd.edu/news/graduate-students-receive-awards-at-awis-regional-conference/    

Craig Reingold, fourth-year graduate student in the Nuclear Science Laboratory working with the group of Prof. Anna Simon, spent ten weeks in summer 2018 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He joined the Academic Cooperation Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which hosts up to 800 undergraduate and graduate students each year. The program is designed to encourage external collaborations with …

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