TIARA - Surrey Emergency Bridging Funding

This request is for emergency bridging funding under the arrangements announced for nuclear physics by Janet Seed. The TIARA project is designed and led by the UK and the TIARA array is ready for use at GANIL/SPIRAL in France. Surrey is the lead institution in the project. A series of 5 major experiments to investigate the changes in magic numbers and shell structure for very neutron rich nuclei, and other structural studies, has been approved by the GANIL PAC and is scheduled for running in 2007. Three of these experiments have principal spokespersons from TIARA. All of the experiments will be performed by bringing together equipment and personnel of TIARA and the other major group working in this area, MUST2. This campaign starting in September 2007 represents the first major step towards the building of a major international collaboration to study transfer, with the UK in a leading role. In addition, the TIARA collaboration has an experiment approved for running in late 2007 to extend previous SPIRAL work with a follow-up study at TRIUMF in Canada, using equipment based on the TIARA concept and including new designs contributed by TIARA. This will be the first experiment of its kind in TRIUMF and the PAC anticipated it developing into an important programme for the facility. Due to the changes in funding mechanisms, no postdoctoral support is available to be allocated from the UK to support the setting up and running of these scheduled experiments, but this is vital to maintain UK leadership. Support for academic travel and some technical assistance is also needed.