A detailed study of known and new SD bands in Tb isotopes has been performed with the use of the EUROBALL IV γ-ray array. The high-statistics data set has allowed for the extension of known SD bands at low and high spins by new γ-ray transitions. These transitions, as it turns out, correspond to the rotational frequencies where the principal superdeformed gaps ($Z=66,N=86$) close giving rise to up- or down-bending mechanisms. This enables to attribute the underlying theoretical configurations with much higher confidence as compared to the previous identifications. Five new SD bands have been discovered, three of them assigned to the ${}^{152}\mathrm{Tb}$ and the two others to the ${}^{151}\mathrm{Tb}$ nuclei. Nuclear mean-field calculations have been used to interpret the structure of known SD bands as well as of the new ones in terms of nucleonic configurations.

The Advanced Time-Delayed $\beta \gamma \gamma$(t) method was used to measure lifetimes of selected high-spin states in ${}^{122}\mathrm{Cd}$ populated from ${\beta }^{-}$ decay of the $J^{\pi }=(9^{-})$ isomer in ${}^{122}\mathrm{Ag}$. From the $\gamma \gamma$ coincidences, a new energy level was established at 2616.6 keV with a suggested spin-parity assignment of $8^{-}$. Lifetimes were determined for the high-spin states at 2616.6 and 2502.7 keV as $T_{1/2}=1.35(29)$ ns and 0.24(6) ns, respectively. The transition rates for γ rays de-exciting the $7^{-}$ states in the $N=74$ isotones of ${}^{122}\mathrm{Cd}$, ${}^{124}\mathrm{Sn}$, and ${}^{126}\mathrm{Te}$ were found to be very similar.

The constrained Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov method is used with the Gogny interaction D1S to calculate potential energy surfaces of fissioning nuclei ${}^{226}\mathrm{Th}$ and ${}^{256,258,260}\mathrm{Fm}$ up to very large deformations. The constraints employed are the mass quadrupole and octupole moments. In this subspace of collective coordinates, many scission configurations are identified ranging from symmetric to highly asymmetric fragmentations. Corresponding fragment properties at scission are derived yielding fragment deformations, deformation energies, energy partitioning, neutron binding energies at scission, neutron multiplicities, charge polarization, and total fragment kinetic energies.

The reaction $K^{-}p\to {\Sigma }^0{\pi }^0\to$ neutrals was studied with the Crystal Ball detector at the BNL Alternating Gradient Synchrotron for beam momenta between 514 and 750 MeV/$c$. The photons from ${\Sigma }^0$ and ${\pi }^0$ decays were detected, as well as the neutron in a small fraction of the events. The differential cross section and the ${\Sigma }^0$ polarization are reported at eight momenta and nearly the full angular range. Total cross sections are derived from Legendre polynomial fits to the data. The measurements presented are of considerably higher precision than previous results.

We have investigated the photoneutron cross section of the isotopes ${}^{148,150}\mathrm{Nd}$, ${}^{154}\mathrm{Sm}$, and ${}^{154,160}\mathrm{Gd}$ close to the neutron emission threshold in photoactivation experiments at the superconducting Darmstadt electron linear accelerator S-DALINAC. Naturally composed targets were activated with a high-intensity bremsstrahlung beam at various energies and the reaction yields have been determined by measuring the activity of the produced radioactive isotopes with HPGe detectors. The results are compared to two different statistical model calculations.

We study the effects of double octupole and quadrupole phonon excitations in the ${}^{144}\mathrm{Sm}$ nucleus on quasi-elastic ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}+{}^{144}\mathrm{Sm}$ scattering at backward angles. To this end, we use the coupled-channels framework, taking into account explicitly the anharmonicities of the vibrations. We use the same coupling scheme as that previously employed to explain the experimental data of sub-barrier fusion cross sections for the same system. We show that the experimental data for the quasi-elastic cross sections are well reproduced in this way, although the quasi-elastic barrier distribution has a distinct high energy peak which is somewhat smeared in the experimental barrier distribution. We also discuss the effects of proton transfer on the quasi-elastic barrier distribution. Our study indicates that the fusion and quasi-elastic barrier distributions for this system cannot be accounted for simultaneously with the standard coupled-channels approach.

We investigate the phenomenology of freely expanding fluids, with different material properties, evolving through the Israel-Stewart (IS) causal viscous hydrodynamics, and compare our results with those obtained in the relativistic Eckart-Landau-Navier-Stokes (ELNS) acausal viscous hydrodynamics. Through the analysis of scaling invariants we give a definition of thermalization time that can be self-consistently determined in viscous hydrodynamics. Next we construct the solutions for one-dimensional boost-invariant flows. Expansion of viscous fluids is slower than that of one-dimensional ideal fluids, resulting in entropy production. At late times, these flows are reasonably well approximated by solutions obtained in ELNS hydrodynamics. Estimates of initial energy densities from observed final values are strongly dependent on the dynamics one chooses. For the same material, and the same final state, IS hydrodynamics gives the smallest initial energy density. We also study fluctuations about these one-dimensional boost-invariant backgrounds; they are damped in ELNS hydrodynamics but can become sound waves in IS hydrodynamics. The difference is obvious in power spectra due to clear signals of wave-interference in IS hydrodynamics, which is completely absent in ELNS dynamics.

The differential and total cross sections for kaon pair production in the $\mathit{pp}\to {\mathit{ppK}}^{+}{K}^{-}$ reaction have been measured at three beam energies of 2.65, 2.70, and 2.83 GeV using the ANKE magnetic spectrometer at the COSY-Jülich accelerator. These near-threshold data are separated into pairs arising from the decay of the ϕ-meson and the remainder. For the non-ϕ selection, the ratio of the differential cross sections in terms of the $K^{-}p$ and $K^{+}p$ invariant masses is strongly peaked toward low masses. This effect can be described quantitatively by using a simple ansatz for the $K^{-}p$ final state interaction, where it is seen that the data are sensitive to the magnitude of an effective $K^{-}p$ scattering length. When allowance is made for a small number of ϕ events where the $K^{-}$ rescatters from the proton, the ϕ region is equally well described at all three energies. A very similar phenomenon is discovered in the ratio of the cross sections as functions of the $K^{-}\mathit{pp}$ and $K^{+}\mathit{pp}$ invariant masses and the identical final state interaction model is also very successful here. The world data on the energy dependence of the non-ϕ total cross section is also reproduced, except possibly for the results closest to threshold.

The orbital electron capture decay of hydrogen- and helium-like ions is analyzed theoretically. For the general case of allowed nuclear transitions, we calculate the ratio of the decay rate for a helium-like ion to the decay rate for a hydrogen-like ion. We demonstrate that in some cases the decay probability for a nucleus with a single bound electron can be larger than that for the same nucleus with two bound electrons. The possibilities of experimental verification of our predictions are briefly discussed.

Excited, low-spin states in ${}^{130}\mathrm{Ce}$ are populated in the ${\beta }^{+}/\epsilon$ decay of ${}^{130}\mathrm{Pr}$ and studied through off-beam γ-ray spectroscopy at the Yale moving tape collector. New coincidence data lead to the construction of a substantially revised level scheme. The low-lying states of ${}^{130}\mathrm{Ce}$ are compared with the predictions of the X(5) critical-point model and the X(5)-${\beta }^4$ model, and the latter is found to give better agreement with the data in terms of energies. Discrepancies in the relative $B(E2)$ values in ${}^{130}\mathrm{Ce}$ and the geometrical models suggest that the γ degree of freedom may play an important role in this mass region.

The ${}^{19}\mathrm{F}$($p,\gamma$)${}^{20}\mathrm{Ne}$ reaction represents the only breakout path for the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle operating at temperatures below $T=0.1$ GK, an energy regime important for main-sequence hydrogen burning as well as hydrogen burning in asymptotic giant branch stars. Large experimental uncertainties exist due to unknown low energy direct and resonant reaction contributions that have been difficult to study because of the high γ-ray background from the ${}^{19}\mathrm{F}$($p,{\alpha }_2\gamma$) reaction. A new detection technique has been developed at the University of Notre Dame to measure the ${}^{19}\mathrm{F}$($p,\gamma$) and ${}^{19}\mathrm{F}$($p,{\alpha }_i\gamma$) reactions over an energy range of $E_{\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{m}.}=200\text{−}760$ keV. The analysis was carried out in a Breit-Wigner framework. This allowed a new determination of the resonance parameters as well as a first measurement of the signs of the interference terms. Partial widths and resonance strengths are reported for the resonances in this region.

The general problem of dissipation in macroscopic large-amplitude collective motion and its relation to energy diffusion of intrinsic degrees of freedom of a nucleus is studied. By applying the cranking approach to the nuclear many-body system, a set of coupled dynamical equations for the collective classical variable and the quantum mechanical occupancies of the intrinsic nuclear states is derived in the limit of weak coupling of the collective and intrinsic subsystems. Different dynamical regimes of the intrinsic nuclear motion and its consequences on time properties of collective dissipation are discussed.

Using the manifestly covariant spectator theory and modeling the nucleon as a system of three constituent quarks with their own electromagnetic structure, we show that all four nucleon electromagnetic form factors can be very well described by a manifestly covariant nucleon wave function with zero orbital angular momentum. Since the concept of wave function depends on the formalism, the conclusions of light-cone theory requiring nonzero angular momentum components are not inconsistent with our results. We also show that our model gives a qualitatively correct description of deep inelastic scattering, unifying the phenomenology at high and low momentum transfer. Finally, we review two different definitions of nuclear shape and show that the nucleon is spherical in this model, regardless of how shape is defined.

We present an improved quark mass density-dependent model with the nonlinear scalar sigma field and the ω-meson field. By comparing with the quark-meson coupling model, we show that our model can successfully describe saturation properties, the equation of state, the compressibility and the effective nuclear mass of nuclear matter under the mean field approximation.

We generate the core-cluster partitions of even-even nuclei in the rare-earth region using a form of the core-cluster interaction employed previously in an analysis of nuclei in the actinide region. The correlations between the core-cluster charge products thus obtained and various nuclear observables are found to display similar characteristics in the two mass regions.

To explore the nature of the coupling effects on $p+$${}^{10}\mathrm{Be}$ and $p+$${}^{11}\mathrm{Be}$ elastic scattering at incident energies of $39.1A$ and at $38.4A$ MeV, respectively, coupled reaction channels (CRC) calculations were performed for the ${}^{10}\mathrm{Be}$$(p,d)$${}^9\mathrm{Be}$ and ${}^{11}\mathrm{Be}$$(p,d)$${}^{10}\mathrm{Be}$${}^{*}$ pickup to the ground state of ${}^9\mathrm{Be}$ and the 5.960 MeV $1^{-}$ and 6.263 MeV $2^{-}$ doublet of excited states in ${}^{10}\mathrm{Be}$ at the corresponding incident energies. We show that within the CRC framework, the coupling effect on the elastic scattering is significant in both cases and produces effective absorption in the entrance channel. This suggests that the use of a fitted $p+$${}^{10}\mathrm{Be}$ optical model potential may lead to too much absorption in the core plus proton interaction in extended coupled discretized continuum channels type of calculations for the $p+$${}^{11}\mathrm{Be}$ system and that coupling to the ${}^{11}\mathrm{Be}$$(p,d)$${}^{10}\mathrm{Be}$${}^{*}$ pickup should be explicitly included in such studies.

The nuclear suppression of high transverse momentum $P_T$ hadrons is one of the most striking findings in heavy-ion collision experiments. It has long been recognized that the suppression can be theoretically described by folding the primary parton spectrum with an energy loss probability distribution which is suitably averaged over the collision geometry. However, an interesting problem is to what degree the procedure can be inverted, i.e., given a measurement of the suppression factor $R_{\mathit{AA}}$ with arbitrary precision, can the probability distribution of energy loss be extracted in a model-independent way? In this Brief Report, we present a conceptual study of the inversion problem for LHC energies and demonstrate that a measurement of $R_{\mathit{AA}}$ alone is insufficient to determine the distribution, other observables such as γ-hadron correlations must be taken into account.

This paper suffers from conceptual difficulties and unjustified approximations that render its conclusions invalid. The influence of protons on electron capture by ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$ in the Sun is already included in the standard plasma screening correction to the density of thermal electrons at the ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$ nucleus needed for calculating the capture rate. Moreover, the approximation to the three-body wave function that underlies the entire argument of Belyaev, Tater, and Truhlík [Phys. Rev. C 75, 034608 (2007)] is not valid in the limit under consideration, namely when the electron and the ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$ nucleus are spatially coincident and the proton is some 30 000 fm away from the other two particles.

Azimuthal angle ($\Delta \varphi$) correlations are presented for charged hadrons from dijets for $0.4<p_T<10$ GeV/$c$ in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=200$ GeV. With increasing $p_T$, the away-side distribution evolves from a broad and relatively flat shape to a concave shape, then to a convex shape. Comparisons to $p+p$ data suggest that the away-side can be divided into a partially suppressed “head” region centered at $\Delta \varphi ~\pi$ and an enhanced “shoulder” region centered at $\Delta \varphi ~\pi \pm 1.1$. The $p_T$ spectrum for the head region softens toward central collisions, consistent with the onset of jet quenching. The spectral slope for the shoulder region is independent of centrality and trigger $p_T$, which offers constraints on energy transport mechanisms and suggests that it contains the medium response to energetic jets.