STORI'14 - 9th International Conference on Nuclear Physics at Storage Rings

Exotic nuclei and their properties play an important role in many astrophysical scenarios. During the supernova collapse electron captures on protons in neutron-rich nuclei is the dominating weak-interaction process. Here decisive progress has been achieved due to large-scale shell model calculations, constrained by data obtainded from charge-exchange measurements on nuclei. Recently nuclear deexcitation by neutrino pair emission has been explored for the first time in supernova simulations. It has little effect on the dynamics, but is the major source of muon and tau neutrinos during the collapse phase. Important progress has also been achieved to describe inelastic neutrino-nucleus scattering on nuclei at the finite temperature of the collapse. Finally supernovae are also the site of explosive nucleosynthesis. This site as well as the mergers of two neutron stars are explored as the potential sites of the astrophysical r-process.

The talk will initially review the first generation of nuclear reaction experiments with heavy ions on the ESR storage ring at GSI which have aimed at addressing key issues in nuclear astrophysics including the astrophysical p-process and the triggering of X-ray bursts. The talk will then go on to explore exciting new initiatives with an emphasis on the use of radioactive beams for such measurements.

The DAΦNE collider, located in the Frascati National Laboratories of INFN, has two main rings, where electrons and positrons are stored to collide at a center of mass energy of 1.02 GeV, the Φ resonance mass. KLOE-2 experiment is located at the collider interaction region. The detector is capable to observe and collect data coming from Φ decay: charged and neutral kaon pairs, lighter unflavoured mesons (η, η’ f0, a0, ω/ρ). In the first half of 2013 the KLOE detector has been upgraded inserting new detector layers in the inner part of the apparatus, around the interaction region: a new tracking system, Inner tracker, to improve tracking eficiency and vertex resolution and two new calorimenters, QCAL and CCAL-T in order to improve detector hermeticity and acceptance. The long shutdown has been used to undertake a general consolidation program aimed at improving the Φ-Factory operation stability and reliability and, in turn, the collider uptime. The DAΦNE collider has been successfully commissioned after the experimental detector modification and a major upgrade and consolidation program involving a large part of the accelerator complex. This contribution presents the Φ-Factory setup and the achieved performances in terms of beam currents, luminosity, detector background and related aspects together with the KLOE-2 physics program, upgrade status report and recent physics results.

At present, the charmonium spectrum above the open charm threshold is far from being understood. While only few predicted states have been found, the properties of many of the observed states do not match the expectations. The BESIII experiment has accumulated large data samples in electron--positron annihilations in the charm energy region. Recent results from these data will be presented with a special focus on the charmonium--like Z states.

The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe, FAIR, will provide worldwide unique accelerator and experimental detectors allowing for a large variety of unprecedented fore-front research in extreme state of matter physics and applied science. This presentation outlines the results of ongoing experimental activities on heavy ion accelerator facilities, providing intense beams capable of generating extreme state of matter by isochoric energy deposition regime. Considerations are focused on new experiments by using large synchrotron rings which appear to be efficient tools for investigations into the physics of high-brightness beams generation and high energy density research. Development of new plasma diagnostic methods for high resolution measurements of dense, non-ideal plasmas parameters is discussed. Reference: www.fair-center.eu

The NICA (Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAcility) complex is presently under realization phase at JINR [1]. The main goal of the NICA scientific program is an experimental study of hot and dense strongly interacting matter in heavy ion collisions at nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energies of 4-11 GeV and at average luminosity of 1027 cm−2s−1 for Au (79+) in the collider mode. In parallel, fixed target experiments at the upgraded JINR superconducting synchrotron Nuclotron are carried out with the extracted beams of various nuclei species up to gold with the momenta up to 13 GeV/c for protons. The program also foresees a study of spin physics with extracted and colliding beams of polarized deuterons and protons at the centre-of-mass energies up to 26 GeV for proton collisions. The proposed program allows to search for possible signs of the mixed phase and critical endpoint, and to shed more light on the problem of nucleon spin structure. An overview of the NICA project as well as the present project status will be presented. References [1] N. Agapov et al. (NICA Collaboration), Design and Construction of Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAcility (NICA), Conceptual Design Report, Dubna, 2008; http://nica.jinr.ru.