Anna Simon-Robertson

Cornelius P. Browne served as the director for the Nuclear Structure Lab for nearly thirty years. Through his hard work and dedication he steered the lab through the most successful period in its history. In honor of Dr. Browne this award is presented annually to an outstanding Nuclear Physics graduate student who has exemplified Professor Browne’s work ethic.

The 2022 Cornelius P. Browne Memorial Award in Nuclear Physics is shared between two graduate students. Orlando Olivas-Gomez was recognized for his work on searching for branching points in the p-process nucleosynthesis path. In his thesis Orlando measured (p,γ) reactions in the A=100 mass region. The goal of his work was to identify nuclei in this region for which within the p-process temperatures, the competition between the (γ,n) and (γ,p) reactions determines the nucleosynthesis flow. He confirmed that ¹¹¹In is a branching point in the reaction flow.

Orlando is the third graduate student in the history to receive all three of the awards: the Larry Lamm Award, the Cornelius Browne Award and the Kaneb Center Outstanding TA Award. The previous two people to reach this goal were Daniel Robertson and James deBoer.

https://isnap.nd.edu/news/orlando-olivas-gomez-and-august-gula-receive-2022-browne-award/

After a year-long delay, the measurements with Hyperion for Jes’ thesis were completed. A week of 28 MeV protons on Zn targets resulted in a great data set containing (p,p’), (p,d) and (p,t) reactions that Jes will use as a surrogate-type approach to extract neutron capture cross sections on several Zn isotopes.

Orlando and Miriam joined the team to work with the LLNL collaborators (including Craig, now a postdoc at LLNL) and helped with the setup and shifts during the run.

After nearly two years of a sabbatical at CASPAR, HECTOR made it back from South Dakota to the NSL. During the past two weeks, Beka has measured over 400 data points to investigate the proton capture cross section on 92 and 94 molybdenum isotopes. In the photo, Beka showing Miriam, Jane and John how the DAQ system works in preparation for the beamtime.

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 interact with potential employers.

Our goal is to shed exposure on these individuals by providing an online series of selective seminars to be held 1-2 times a month until conference travel has returned to some normalcy.

To learn more or recommend someone for a seminar, please visit: https://enppreview.tamu.edu/

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 STARLiTeR array. Their work will help us understand the response function of the gamma-ray detectors and will allow for optimizing the setup in the future to maximize the gamma-ray detection probability.

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 scenarios. With CASPAR’s low-energy, high-intensity beams and HECTOR’s high gamma-summing efficiency, the CASTOR team will push the limits of the cross section measurements. HECTOR will remain underground until August 2020 and will be utilized for several experimental campaigns lead by Notre Dame and strongly supported by collaborators from South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.

Original article: https://isnap.nd.edu/news/hector-ready-for-experiments-at-caspar/