Events

Title: The Production of Star Dust in the Lab

Abstract: Chemical elements are the building blocks of our earth. To understand the origin and the abundance of these elements, we need to combine our expertise in astronomy and nuclear astrophysics. Elements up to nickel with a proton number Z=28 are formed through nuclear fusion processes in stars. Heavier elements originate from processes like proton-capture, slow neutron-capture and fast neutron-capture. The prediction of the exact path of these processes and the location of their endpoint requires nuclear data such as half-lives, decay modes and capture cross-sections of the isotopes involved. For the formation of the heaviest elements, the height of the fission barriers is critical.
In my talk, I will introduce the experimental techniques to produce and study exotic nuclei in the laboratory. I will present our ongoing work focusing on mass measurements at the endpoint of the proton-capture process as well as the recently started ERC-funded NEXT project. The aim of NEXT is to discover new Neutronrich EXotic nuclei produced in multinucleon Transfer reactions. These new isotopes will provided important benchmark data for the prediction of the path of the rapid neutron-capture process and contribute to the answer of the open question, which is the heaviest element formed in our universe.