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.