Project 7:

Detection of low energy conversion electrons

(Third year student project)

Tibor Kibédi, Paivi Nieminen, Gregory Lane and George Dracoulis

Department of Nuclear Physics, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University

A novel recoil spectrometer is being developed at the department to study the decay of long lived (isomeric) nuclear states. Studying the nuclear decay properties of these states, involving gamma-rays and conversion electrons offers a unique tool to probe unusual aspects of nuclear structure. The isomeric states itself will be formed in reactions with heavy ion beams from the ANU 14UD accelerator.

To separate the nuclear species of interest from the scattered beam particles and other reaction products a new recoil separator, pictured below, has been proposed. It builds on the existing 6.5 Tesla gas-filled solenoid. An essential part of the project is to develop an array of semiconductor detectors, marked as Si(Li) array on the drawing.  The project is aiming to explore the effect of the absorption of electrons in various materials, including the catcher tape and the Si(Li) detector.

If you are interested, please contact:

Dr. Tibor Kibédi: (02) 61252093, Tibor.Kibedi@anu.edu.au

Dr. Paivi Nieminen: (02) 61255179, Paivi.Nieminen@anu.edu.au

Dr. Gregory Lane: (02) 61250375, Gregory.Lane@anu.edu.au

Prof. George Dracoulis: (02) 61252090, GeorgeDracoulis@anu.edu.au