Trial lecture - time and place
Trial lecture: 10:15 am at Geology building auditorium 1
Adjudication committee
- Professor Berta Rubio Barroso, Instituto de Física Corpuscular, CSIC and University of Valencia, Spain
- Professor Paul Garrett, Department of Physics, University of Guelph, Canada
- Professor Are Raklev, Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Norway
Chair of defence
Professor Heidi Sandaker
Supervisors
- Andreas Görgen
- Eda Sahin
Additional information
Nuclei are formed by a combination of protons and neutrons which are bound to each
other; the way in which these constituents organize in each specific nucleus, can determine
its overall properties, such as its shape, or its stability. Part of the PhD work was dedicated
to study very exotic copper nuclides, which have 12 to 14 neutrons more than the ones
found in nature, and exist for less than a second after being created in the laboratory. This
excess of neutrons provokes a rearrangement of the protons, which in turn affects the
properties of these nuclei. The degree of stability of these nuclei have, for example,
astrophysical implications, specifically in the understanding of the formation of the
elements heavier than iron. Also in this thesis, unstable neodymium and samarium
nuclides were studied in nuclear reactions. In these nuclei, by adding a very small amount
of energy, it is expected to observe drastic changes of the nuclear shape. The transitions
between prolate shapes (like an American football), oblate shapes (like a clementine), and
triaxial shapes (like a kiwi fruit) in these nuclei can be associated as well with specific
configurations adopted by the protons and the neutrons. The experiments were performed
in Japan, Poland, and Romania, in collaboration with a large number of researches from
different universities around the world. The experimental results were interpreted from a
theoretical point of view.