Precision measurements of light nuclei at the Birmingham MC40 cyclotron

Birmingham is the only university in the UK with a cyclotron for accelerating nuclei. The Nuclear Physics Group at Birmingham has its own beam-line at the cyclotron for performing experiments. The main focus of these investigations is to probe the structure of nuclear cluster states; energy levels in light nuclei that are formed from sub-clusters of proton and neutrons rather than a homogeneous mix of nucleons. This project is to use beams from the cyclotron to examine the structure of such states using inelastic- and resonant-scattering reactions and/or using particle-gamma coincidences. The aim of these experiments is to extract detailed information about the underlying nucleon configurations to advance our knowledge of these exotic states. The project will involve hands-on experimental work to implement the detection systems as well as data analysis to obtain the key physics results.


This project will be undertaken within the Nuclear Physics group at the University of Birmingham. For details of the group and to find out more about studying for a PhD here, please refer to http://www.np.ph.bham.ac.uk. More generic aspects of PhD study at the University of Birmingham, including the Doctoral Research Prospectus, can be found at http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/drp.